1

BRADGATE PARK Childhood Home of Lady Jane Grey JoanJoan Stevenson Stevenson AnthonyAnthony Squires Squires

Second Edition: Fully revised and expanded

KAIROS PRESS Newtown Linford Leicestershire 1999 books from KAIROSKAIROS PRESSPRESS to Home Page 2

Copyright © Joan Stevenson and Anthony Squires 1994, 1999

ISBN 1 871344 23 9

First edition (ISBN 1-971344-02-6) 1994 Second edition, 1999

Design and layout by Robin Stevenson, Kairos Press. Body text in Aldine 721 BT 10.5 pt. Imagesetting by Qualitype, Leicester. Printed in Great Britain by Norwood Press, Anstey, Leicester.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

KAIROS PRESS 552 Bradgate Road Newtown Linford Leicestershire, LE6 0HB

Front cover: Exploring around the ruins of Bradgate House. 3

CONTENTS

1. Bradgate: A Medieval Deer Park ...... 7

2. The Rise of the Greys ...... 13

3. The Building of Bradgate House ...... 17

4. The Development of the Park ...... 27

5. The Greys in Tudor Times ...... 35

6. After Lady Jane ...... 43

7. The Decay of Bradgate House ...... 50

8. The Parting of the Ways ...... 68

9. A Self-Guided Walk Through Bradgate ...... 77

Further Reading ...... 82

Acknowledgements & Index ...... 83 4

List of Illustrations Aerial photograph, Bradgate from the north ...... 6 Old John Tower ...... 52 Aerial photograph of part of Groby Manor ...... 7 Engraving of the ruins, dated 1793 ...... 53 Granite blocks along Little Matlock gorge ...... 8 One of Bradgate’s dry stone walls ...... 54 Slumb Breccia, brittle rocks near the War Memorial . 9 Old John at the beginning of the 20th century . . . 55 Swithland Slate outcrops near the Hallgates entrance 9 Queen Adelaide’s Oak, beside the ruins ...... 55 The moat, built to defend the parker’s house . . . . 11 Fallow deer at Bradgate ...... 57 Groby Manor ...... 13 The ruins in a late 19th century photograph . . . . 58 Cropston Reservoir in 1988, drained of water . . . . 14 Aerial photograph showing Bradgate’s spinneys . . 59 A section of the park pale in Elder Spinney . . . . . 15 The new Bradgate House at Steward’s Hay . . . . . 60 Profile of the park pale exposed by the River Lyn . . 16 The water meadow, and site of the sluice gates . . . 61 The ruins of Bradgate House, from the west . . . . . 19 Exotic trees in Little Matlock ...... 62 Inside the ruins – view across the great hall . . . . . 20 Engraving of the ruins, from 1793 ...... 63 Aerial view of the ruins, from the south ...... 22 19th C. water-coloured engraving of Little Matlock 65 Bradgate House at the time of Lady Jane Grey 24 & 25 Cropston Reservoir ...... 66 Drawing of Bradgate by Leonard Knyff, c.1700 . . . 26 A waterfall at Little Matlock ...... 67 The park pale where it crosses the deer sanctuary . . 28 An early postcard of the ruins ...... 68 Old postcard showing the leat, and site of the dam . 29 A photograph of the ruins, with the gable end intact 69 The leat as it runs towards the ruins ...... 30 The War Memorial ...... 70 Site of the watermill ...... 30 Kitty Brown ...... 71 Aerial view of Bradgate House and gardens . . . . . 31 Marion’s Cottage, where Kitty Brown was born . . 71 View of the formal gardens through the east gateway 32 The Mystery Ditches from the east ...... 72 Detail from Kiddiar’s map of Bradgate, from 1746 . 33 The Mystery Ditches looking towards Hallgates . . 72 Part of the 17th century garden canal ...... 34 Charles Bennion, benefactor ...... 73 South view of the House on its completion . . . . . 37 The Wishing Stone ...... 73 Lady Jane Grey, a 19th century engraving ...... 38 Old John from Old John Spinney ...... 74 The ruins – Lady Jane’s Tower ...... 39 View across the park from the spring near the ruins 75 Pollarded oak trees at Bradgate ...... 41 A misty day on Old John Hill ...... 76 An ancient pollarded oak at Bradgate ...... 42 A frosty morning in Little Matlock ...... 77 Bradgate House at the time of Lady Jane Grey . . . 45 A peacock in the ruins ...... 78 The Great Hall, and 17th century bay window . . . 47 Red deer at Bradgate ...... 78 The hall, with its bay window, seen from the north . 48 Old John Spinney and the War Memorial ...... 80 Enville Hall, Staffordshire ...... 51 Old John from Sliding Stone Spinney ...... 81 Dunham Massey, Cheshire ...... 51 Little Matlock in summer ...... 84 5

Maps, Diagrams, and Feature Boxes

Bradgate Park and the Manor of Groby ...... 7 Rocks in Bradgate ...... 8-9 Map showing the phases of development of Bradgate Park ...... 10 The Village of Bradgate ...... 14 Brick-making ...... 18 Bradgate House, feature box and sketch plan ...... 23 Where Was the Entrance to Bradgate House? ...... 24 Chronology of Bradgate House ...... 25 The Bradgate of John Leland ...... 27 The Line of Succession to the crown, on the accession of Edward VI ...... 36 Grey Family Tree: Part one – the Claim to the Throne ...... 37 Bradgate’s Ancient Oaks ...... 42 Grey Family Tree: Part two – After Lady Jane ...... 45 Rabbits ...... 49 Enville Hall and Dunham Massey ...... 51 From the Diary of Viscount Torrington ...... 53 The Walls of Bradgate ...... 54 The Deer ...... 56-57 The Spinneys of Bradgate ...... 59 The Water Meadow ...... 61 Grey Family Tree: Part three – The End of the Earldom ...... 63 Cropston Reservoir ...... 66 Grey Family Tree: Part four – The Bradgate Inheritance ...... 69 Kitty Brown Remembers ...... 71 Bradgate’s Mystery Ditches ...... 72 Bradgate Park as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) ...... 75-76 Map showing the features in the self-guided walk through Bradgate Park ...... 79 A Hill Walk ...... 80 A Circular Route ...... 81 6 7

1. BRADGATE: A MEDIEVAL DEER PARK

When William the Conquerer came to England in 1066, he handed over large Bradgate Park and the Manor of Groby tracts of the country to his friends. Hugh de Grentmesnil, who was granted much of Leicestershire, was lucky to survive the Battle of Hastings. His horse broke its bridle rein while leaping over a bush and bolted towards the enemy. The sight of English defenders charging forwards with raised hatchets, though, caused it to turn about and bolt back to safety. Among the lands given to Hugh was the Manor of Groby, including the area now known as Bradgate Park. Bradgate was part of the waste of Charnwood Forest. There were the same rocky outcrops we know today, more trees, heather and gorse, but less bracken. There were red and roe deer and big birds of prey such as buzzards, peregrines and eagles, but no fallow The medieval manor of Groby, on the southern fringe of Charnwood deer, no rabbits and no rats. There was Forest, extended from Botcheston, Newtown Unthank, Ratby and no village of Newtown Linford and no Groby (seen lower left in the picture above) in the south and west, over tillage, just rough grazing. Indeed there the Forest to Swithland (far distance right) in the north-east. From the was no village between Anstey and mid thirteenth century the manor was owned by the Ferrers family who Shepshed, except, maybe, small pioneer lived in a house on the site of the present Groby Old Hall. In the mid Scandinavian settlements at Charley fifteenth century it passed by marriage to the Greys. The villages of and Ulverscroft. Newtown Linford (middle left) and Bradgate (now lost, see page 14), Groby Manor stretched from existed as poor settlements in the waste of Charnwood with the original Botcheston, Newtown Unthank and hunting park of the Ferrers occupying particularly rocky and infertile Ratby in the south to Swithland in the ground (upper centre). The present park was begun by Thomas Grey east, encompassing Ulverscroft and (1451-1501) and completed by his son Thomas (1477-1530). Groby Bradgate. This area of Leicestershire Pool, noted in medieval times for the value of its fishing, can be seen held no particular interest to Hugh, and at the bottom right of the aerial photograph above. he may not even have visited it. 8

Rocks in Bradgate Bradgate contains some of the oldest and hardest rocks in Britain, and is an area of particular interest to geologists. Some of the rocks formed deep underground, as molten material which cooled and crystallized to make granites. Others began in water, as layers of sediment, still others from the settling dust and ash errupted from a volcano. The layers of sediment were later compressed into slaty rocks. What was once a high mountain range over Charnwood has eroded, exposing craggy cliffs. Bradgate’s granite is very hard, and occurs as massive blocks of stone. Examined closely, a mass of crystals can be seen, showing that it slowly solidified from molten magma deep underground. It forms the cliffs along the Little Matlock gorge, to Bradgate House, and Above: The large granite blocks of the Little Matlock gorge. continues up the hill as far as Tyburn and Bowling Green Plantation. Swithland Woods, but it also occurs between the Deer All the other stone is made up of various sorts of Barn and Hallgates. sedimentary rocks. Most of these are formed by layers Some of the most dramatic and geologically of sand, silt or clay building up and cementing together interesting rocks can be found just south of Old John. under water. They all show something of their original A line of craggy cliffs runs between the War Memorial layered forms, but have been subsequently changed by and Sliding Stone Spinney. These are known as Slump the effects of heat and pressure because of being buried Breccia, and formed as a mixture of muds and ash from deep underground. Their present appearance is Charnwood’s volcano. They now appear as very brittle, affected both by the nature of that pressure (which has sharply fractured rocks, containing faint traces of some caused some layers to be twisted and folded) and the of the earliest fossil marks in Britain, so do not damage nature of the original materials. Some, such as the these, or any other of the rocks at Bradgate. Swithland slates, started as fine muds which eventually South of these cliffs, the rock is a softer sedimentary became the smooth slabs used for house roofs. material known as Bradgate Tuff Formation, Swithland slate is best seen in the neighbouring producing a more rounded landscape. North of the 9

the accumulation of wind-blown dust in shallow lakes and pools. A particularly striking example of this clay is the red ‘cliff’ exposed on the south bank of the River Lyn, not far from Bradgate House. On top of all these rocks, the most recent deposits are from the melting ice sheets of the last Ice Age. As the huge glacial sheet melted it left behind clay, sand, pebbles, even boulders, which had travelled in the ice from all over Northern Britain. The result is known as Boulder Clay. So in amongst the ‘bedrock’ stones you may also find all sorts of rocks which don’t really ‘belong’ here. Another effect of the glaciation was probably to divert a big torrent of meltwater down a previously small valley, which then became the spectacular gorge at Little Matlock.

Above: Slump Breccia – ancient brittle rocks made from volcanic ash, south of the War Memorial. Right: Swithland slates outcrop near the Hallgates entrance, overlooking Cropston Reservoir slump breccia are other sedimentary rocks, the Beacon Hill Tuff Formation, and these form the dramatic hill top of Old John. In places, layers of red clay lie on top of these ancient hard rocks. These are known as Mercian Mudstones, and were formed in desert conditions from 10

Warren Hill SWITHLAND WOODS

Hunts Hill Spinney Hall Gates

Blakeshay Wood Sliding Stone Old JohnTower Spinney

Old John Spinney Coppice Plantation War Memorial Dale Spinney CROPSTON CROPSTON RESERVOIR (built in 1870) BRADGATE Elder PARK Tyburn Hill Bowling Site of Medieval Spinney Green Deer Barn Farmhouse Spinney Spinney

Leat, which carried BRADGATE water to the house HOUSE Surviving banks and ditches of the Site of dam across the medieval park pale R ive Ly the river r n Holly Thorn The earliest, Plantation Spinney medieval park The present day NEWTOWN park LINFORD

Probable maximum anruet rdaefo the from Bradgate to route Main extent of the park, Chaplin’s Groby at House Manor in c.1500 Rough Present day roads Phases of Development at Bradgate Some other ancient Sections of the original boundary pale access routes can still be found within the larger park Sheet Hedges Wood Present day created by Thomas Grey. The spinneys woodland are all 19th century creations. There are, 500 metres however, many much older oak trees 500 yards which can be found in various parts of the park. ANSTEY to GROBY 11

After Hugh’s time, Groby had a number of different and fields under cultivation, in earlier days it was the owners, and was one of several such Manors — including park which was more carefully tended than the Barrow, Shepshed, Whitwick and Belton — which surrounding forest. It was looked after by parkers, whose encircled Charnwood Forest. All the manors included job it was to ensure that there were always deer when at least one deer park. Groby had two: Groby Park and they were needed for food or sport. Bradgate Park. The first recorded mention of Bradgate Park is dated There were hundreds of deer parks in England in 1241, when the earl of Winchester was given the right to the middle ages, including about fifty in Leicestershire, take deer with nine bows and six hounds. Bradgate may and a large landowner might have one or more parks in have been established well before then. Its present each of his various manors. Bradgate Park is a rare relic boundaries, though, are not the same as those of the of the days when an ostentatiously rich baron could thirteenth century. When a medieval park was being enjoy hunting his deer and also show the world that he planned, careful account was taken of the rise and fall of was a person of wealth and property. the landscape. One of the most important and difficult Because of its rocky outcrops and steep gradients, tasks of the parkers was to stop the deer escaping. Bradgate was never very suitable for agriculture, so Boundaries were marked not by stone walls, as at stocking it with deer was a sensible use of the land. present, but by an internal ditch and an outer bank Although nowadays we see Bradgate Park as a more or topped by a wooden fence, the whole being known as a less wild and natural landscape encircled by pastures pale. Ideally, the pale would run across a rising hillside

The parker’s house was surrounded by a moat. It was probably never designed to be permanently filled with water, but would have become so in wet periods. As this picture shows, it still does. 12 so that the deer, running uphill, would find it much surrounded by a small moat, which at least reduced the harder to jump out. To keep the expensive perimeter chance of his being murdered in his bed. The house at pale as short as possible, and keep as much of the pale as Bradgate, which would have been of timber possible on rising ground, the optimum shape for a deer construction, is long gone, but the moated site is still park was that of a saucer. visible, and the moat still fills with water in a wet season. The present Bradgate boundaries, however, do not It is close to the main drive between the greensward and make sense from the viewpoint of a medieval surveyor. the ruins, close to a solitary conifer which stands on a The park is square rather than round, which is wasteful small mound. (see item 9 on the self guided walk, pages of fencing, and some of its perimeter walls are on falling 77-79). ground. The discovery of remains of boundary ditches There used to be a village of Bradgate, which was within the park shows that there was an earlier, quite separate from that of Newtown Linford. It is one considerably smaller Bradgate Park. This was the of the least known of the many lost villages of hunting ground of medieval lords of Groby until the Leicestershire, and its position has always been whole area was redeveloped at the end of the fifteenth something of a puzzle. The sites of two houses are century. known, and it appears to have been a small, dispersed Deer were a valuable commodity, and folk from the settlement rather than a nucleated village. It would have nearby villages would have welcomed the chance to cook been easy to destroy during the big changes which some stolen venison (and probably did, from time to accompanied the building of Bradgate House around time). Being a parker was potentially a dangerous job — 1500. Thomas Grey was in fact summoned for not because of the animals, but because of the poachers. depopulation, but claimed that he had rehoused the At Bradgate, as at other parks, the parker lived in a house inhabitants elsewhere. 13

2. THE RISE OF THE GREYS

From 1279 till 1445 Groby Manor was owned by the princess, Jacquetta of Luxemburg, whose first husband Ferrers family, and passed into the hands of the Greys had been the elderly duke of Bedford, brother of King by marriage. Edward, younger son of lord Reginald Henry V. After the duke’s death Jacquetta married the Grey, third baron Grey of Ruthin, married heiress man of her own choice, Sir Richard Woodville. They had Elizabeth Ferrers in 1427, and was himself created lord five sons and seven daughters, of whom Elizabeth was Ferrers and baron Grey of Groby after the death of the eldest. Elizabeth’s grandfather in 1445. Their son, Sir John Elizabeth was about fifteen when she married Sir Grey, changed the family fortunes for all time when he John Grey, on the eve of the civil strife known as the married Elizabeth Woodville of Grafton in Wars of the Roses. Two sons, Thomas and Richard, were Northamptonshire. It was a spectacularly good marriage born; but then Sir John, a Lancastrian, was killed at the for him. Elizabeth’s mother was a minor European second Battle of St Albans in 1461 and the Grey estates were confiscated. Elizabeth, widowed and homeless, took her children back to her parents’ house in Northamptonshire. Desperate to retrieve her husband’s inheritance for her sons, Elizabeth waylaid the king, the Yorkist Edward IV, as he hunted in the forest near Grafton. From this meeting there ensued a romance which culminated in a secret wedding. When Edward was compelled to admit to the marriage, there was an outcry from nobles and people alike, for the marriage of a king was supposed to be a matter of high diplomacy, not personal attachment. The deed was done, however, and Dame Elizabeth Grey became Queen of England. Elizabeth’s life from then on was far from smooth; she spent periods in sanctuary, and her son, Edward, heir to his father’s throne, was born in Westminster Abbey during one such episode. The greatest tragedy of Elizabeth’s life followed the death of her husband. Instead of her son being crowned Edward V, his uncle Richard seized the throne to become Richard III, and Edward and his brother Richard disappeared, becoming

Groby Manor was the Grey family home until Bradgate House was built in the early sixteenth century. 14

The Village of Bradgate Nothing now remains of the former village of Bradgate. Park, and in 1871 a total of 12. Subsequent totals were It was never more than a small settlement and is first included in the returns for Newtown. mentioned by name in 1377, when 41 persons Local historian David Ramsey has brought contributed to the notorious poll tax of that year. A together documentary and archaeological evidence to second assessment of a similar nature, made before show where the 14th century village of Bradgate was 1400, mentions 29 tax payers from the village. When the located. He has also indicated that the village was first marquess of Dorset began work on the building of re-located not once, but twice, by the Greys. The first Bradgate House at the end of the 15th century, he swept Bradgate was a small scattered group of dwellings in the away all the dwellings in order to enlarge the park. For waste of Groby and lay to the north east of the ancient this act of depopulation, a serious crime at the time, he hunting park of the Ferrers. The lands of the village was summoned to answer in Chancery. There he extended south to the ‘Broadgate’ – a wide road known pleaded he had re-housed the villagers elsewhere. When today as Causeway Lane, Cropston. When Thomas hearths were taxed in 1670, only Bradgate House Grey extended the boundary of the ancient park to remained. In 1801 there were 8 persons in Bradgate create his new park about the year 1500, the villagers were moved to a site to the south of the Broadgate. Finally, between 1562 and 1600, the villagers were encouraged to move yet again, this time to near the present Coach and Horses public house at Field Head. The emptying of the reservoir in 1988 revealed ridge and furrow ploughland of the first village (bottom right) as well as a section of the ancient deer park pale (the middle one of three lines seen running across the reservoir floor). The site of at least one of the houses has been discovered in a field near the edge of the reservoir. It shows as a mark in the soil, which can be seen half way up the field on the left of the photograph. Although it was badly damaged by ploughing during World War Two the evidence produced a ground plan of a building which indicated a large rectangular ditched site with internal subdivisions. Pottery fragments from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries have also been found. A second pottery scatter has been located in the area of the Hallgates car park. 15

known to posterity as the Princes in the Tower – A section of the pale of the original park of the Ferrers, seen believed to have beeen smothered at the instigation of here as it passes through Elder Spinney. A park pale consisted their uncle. of a ditch with an external bank topped with a wooden fence, The Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, only a few in order to prevent the deer from escaping. The spinneys were miles from Bradgate, brought another change in planted in the 19th century. However, inside the park, many Elizabeth’s fortunes. The death, during the battle, of ancient oaks remain, some perhaps dating from this earlier Richard III led to the accession of Henry VII, who kept phase of the park’s history. his promise to unite the houses of York and Lancaster by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Elizabeth Overleaf: The park pale is shown very clearly where the River Woodville and Edward IV. Lyn has cut away a section to reveal its profile. This area, just Elizabeth’s two children by her first marriage were downstream from Little Matlock gorge, shows the bank (on the brought up as stepsons of the king of England, and right) with the ditch to the left. The area on the right of the became embroiled in the problems of the succession to photograph would have been outside the medieval park. A line the throne. As a result, the younger brother, Richard of ancient oak trees can be seen growing along the pale where it Grey, lost his head — an occupational hazard for runs through the deer sanctuary on the far bank. members of conspicuous families. 16 17

3. THE BUILDING OF BRADGATE HOUSE

Elizabeth’s eldest son, Thomas, survived the wars, style parks. It was important Thomas moved with the and was created marquess of Dorset. Whenever he could times, not just following others but leading the field. he turned to his country estates and threw his Yet his relationship with the king produced considerable energies into improving his various problems for the Greys. Not without good reasons, properties. At Groby he began to modernise the manor Henry VII continued to have grave doubts about their house, probably between 1488 and 1492. It was loyalty. He once sent the marquess to prison and obliged hopelessly old fashioned, in need of much repair and no the man to lodge large sums of money against his longer suitable for a man of his status. The Tudor scholar continued good behaviour. By the time of his death in and traveller John Leland (1506-1552) noted how he had 1501 the marquess had probably had little opportunity begun ‘foundations and walls of a great house’ at Groby, to make much headway with his plans for Bradgate. It but had left them half finished (see page 27). was left to his son Thomas, the 2nd marquess to At a late stage in the modernisation of Groby, construct the mansion. Thomas Grey abruptly abandoned the work and The second Thomas’s relationship with Henry VII embarked on a much more ambitious project: the was also troubled and he too spent time in the Tower enlargement of the old hunting park of his Ferrers and, in addition, an extended exile in Calais. The ancestors and the building of a great new mansion there. family’s prospects brightened when Henry VIII Sadly, all that remain today are the romantic ruins of the replaced his tired and paranoid father. At court Thomas principle rooms and towers, all long decayed and jousted and played tennis with the energetic and plundered and open to the sky, together with their ebullient young king and became a close leisure time grounds and gardens in the styles and designs of the 16th companion. Thomas’s value to the king gradually and 17th centuries. waned, however, and after about 1523 he was less and It is not difficult to understand why the first less prominent in court circles. Now no longer a serious marquess undertook such an ambitious scheme. He was, political threat to his monarch, the marquess spent his after all, related by marriage to King Henry VII and remaining years enjoying his estates, particularly frequented the royal court. Here was a jungle of great Bradgate, where he continued the construction of the social and political rivalry, where men jockeyed for royal mansion his father had begun. favour and the fruits of high office. Under the king, In 1519 he wrote to his former tutor, Cardinal victor of Bosworth Field in 1485, the old ideas of the Wolsey, from his ‘poor lodge at Bradgate’. The term middle ages were clearly set to change. The lord’s castle ‘poor’ is probably less a description of the state of and the gentleman’s fortified manor house, built in Bradgate and more in deference to the Cardinal, who was times of great unrest, were quickly destined to become much in royal favour and who was engaged on a huge dwellings of the past. All around men of rank and building programme of his own, particularly at substance were beginning to express themselves in new Hampton Court. By 1530, the year of Dorset’s death, the ways on the landscape by erecting large houses set in new greater part of Bradgate was probably complete and 18 thereafter only subject to modifications by later generations of Greys. Brick-making Accounting for the building and The Romans made bricks. They were shallow, like tiles, and development of Bradgate presents serious examples can be seen in the Jewry Wall and (re-used) in the problems since our sources of information adjoining tower of St Nicholas’ Church in Leicester. After the are very slight. Virtually no documentary Romans left, the inhabitants of England largely abandoned making records of what was a costly and lengthy bricks and turned to more easily obtainable building materials, such operation have survived and evidence from as wood and stone. Brick making continued on the Continent and the layout and fabric of much of the ruins was introduced into East Anglia in the thirteenth century, probably is of doubtful value. It thus becomes by Flemish immigrants. The word ‘brick’ did not enter the English necessary to compare what we see at language until the fifteenth century. Until then bricks were usually Bradgate with the designs, materials and known as wall tiles. The earliest local example of brickwork is finances available to Dorset’s probably at Groby where Thomas Grey, the first marquess of Dorset, contemporaries of similar rank in other began modernising the Old Hall. Other very early examples in parts of the country. Leicestershire are parts of Ashby Castle (c. 1470), Kirby Muxloe Thomas, the first marquess, appears to Castle (1480-84) and part of the boundary wall of Leicester Abbey have had at least the basic ideas of what he (c. 1500). The new building material quickly became fashionable set out to achieve and these were more or and prestigious, and it is hardly surprising that Thomas Grey chose less followed and developed by his son. it for his new house at Bradgate. Civil warfare was at an end and the new One of the problems with using bricks was the difficulty of house was to was to be one of splendour and transporting heavy, bulky material by packhorse on roads too rough (compared to a castle) comfort, with all for wheeled traffic. Consequently, they could really only be used in notions of defence abandoned. In the first quantity where there was a local supply of clay. After being dug up, place the house was to be sited over two the clay was left out in the frost over the winter; then it was spread miles away from the ancestral home at on hay or straw and wetted and trodden to screen out pebbles and Groby, a bold move. Second, there was to other rubble. Next it was placed in wooden moulds and left to dry be no moat and no great gatehouse. This for a month or so. After that bricks were fired for about a week in an was an even more daring break with improvised kiln known as a clamp. As temperature control was tradition and was in strong contrast to the difficult, the size of the bricks was variable, as is the case of Bradgate nearby Kirby Muxloe Castle, started but House. Patterns such as diapers of diamonds were created by then abandoned twenty or so years earlier choosing bricks with burnt ends and laying these end-on as headers by William lord Hastings, on the site of the in the brickwork. family’s ancestral manor house. Moreover, On the south side of Cropston Reservoir, about half a mile from Dorset’s house would be constructed on the House, a field known as ‘The Dumples’ marks the site where the only three sides rather than in the form of kilns were located. Here three distinct areas of burning have been a hollow square, the familiar layout. detected and ploughing still brings to the surface fragments of Tudor Stone was the traditional material for bricks. Areas now covered with bushes together with long filled great buildings, but was rejected at hollows mark the probable site of the clay diggings. Bradgate in favour of brick. The former was 19 dull grey granite, locally plentiful and well suited to Bradgate. The first was between 1499 and 1507, when building. But granite walls were the sign of the castle, the family was relatively free from trouble and when acceptable for foundations, but otherwise very their financial situation was reasonably healthy. During depressing. Brick on the other hand was fashionable, it this time Thomas the elder had begun preparation of the could be used to great decorative effect and, not least, site and Thomas the son had probably laid the was costly to produce and therefore a sign of wealth and foundations and started the expansion of the park. After status. At considerable cost and effort, stone and also his period in gaol and exile, the latter may have resumed timber were brought from the deserted manor house of work between 1509 and 1511. Thereafter he was heavily the former earl of Warwick at Sutton Coldfield. The end involved in serving the king (Henry VIII) at home and result of all this activity was a house which came to be abroad until 1523, when his duties were relaxed and he recognised as perhaps the first truly open country house could spend more time at Bradgate. He died in 1530. His in England. heir, Henry, later to be the father of lady Jane Grey, was The political careers of the Dorsets, father and son, a boy of 13 when he succeeded to the lands and title. Any were closely linked to their financial circumstances. additions, extensions or improvements must have taken Thus, whilst each had a strong motive for building, their place between c.1537, the date of his coming of age, and means and opportunities for action were subject to c.1552 when the Greys moved their centre of political considerable change. The records, mostly from official operations to Sheen on the banks of the River Thames sources, suggest there were three periods of activity at and near the royal court. 20

We must take into consideration a number of other factors when trying to account for the development of the house. Much time and effort had to be spent on the logistics of recruiting and retaining a workforce, skilled or unskilled. Of the former, brickmakers and stone masons in sufficient numbers could not be recruited quickly, and once laid off would disperse to other sites in search of work. The building of kilns and the firing of bricks were skilled jobs with the latter occupying only the winter months. Assembling other materials, such as large timbers, could also be a lengthy task. Actual construction took place between March and October, the cold and frosty months being used by skilled men who could work near the site under some kind of cover. In addition, we do not know how much of the work was supervised by the marquess in person and how much was delegated to his surveyor or steward on site, and indeed how competent these men turned out to be. We can expect the principal craftsmen to have been given considerable discretion in solving technical problems as they arose. We certainly do not know what, if any, marked effect on progress the weather had.

A view across the ruins of Bradgate House. In the forground is the cellar below the sevants hall. Adjoining that was the great hall. The only intact building now standing is the chapel, itself much restored, and given a new roof this century 21

All available physical evidence suggests that there Perhaps such features also reflected the changing was no building present at Bradgate before the year 1500 fortunes of the Greys and particularly their need to and that the first marquess’s contribution was limited to entertain important people and house them and their levelling the site. The principal elevation of the house servants. The provision for guests probably meant that was 200 feet long and faced south. It fronted the great the long gallery was used as temporary sleeping hall, about 80 feet long, which had a fire place and accommodation. This gallery first occupied a position chimney rather than the central fire of a typical medieval above the east wing but was later relocated to the western hall. A screens passage separated the hall from the side above the bakery. service buildings to the west and it seems likely that It is here the problems of interpretation become these form the oldest part of the building and contain particularly acute, since attempts at reconstruction, reworked timbers from Sutton Coldfield. using old and not-so-old materials (mostly from The whole household comprised perhaps some 200 unidentified parts of the main building) have been people. The senior members of the family dined at a made. Similar attempts to replace the western walls have table on a dais at one end of the Great Hall whilst the gone far beyond anything required simply to make the others ate at tables in the body of the hall. As time went building safe from collapse. Much cement grouting is by it became the custom for the family to withdraw to visible and almost all the south-westernmost tower has private apartments, which at Bradgate were in the east been rebuilt. Moreover, it is doubtful if the ovens in the wing. Most of the houses of this period were built with kitchens are anything more than creative a range of rooms arranged one room deep. At Bradgate reconstructions. Such attempts at ‘imaginative the rooms were double banked which suggests that restoration’ were taking place as recently as 1929 and, additions and alterations to the original plan were being while no doubt done with the best of intentions, now made as building progressed. make an accurate interpretation of the fabric difficult. This sort of development was not unusual in early In 1552 Henry Grey, the third marquess, was created Tudor houses as seen at The Vine in Hampshire and duke of Suffolk, and it is clear that about this time the Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire. What slight family came to regard their house at Sheen, on the banks evidence there is at Bradgate suggests that the outer of the Thames and near the royal court, as their main bays, each 21 feet wide, were later additions. In this case residence. it is easy to account for ‘second thoughts’ on the part of After the fall of the family in the lady Jane affair of the marquess since the building of Bradgate appears to 1554, the estates reverted to the crown. It is likely that have taken place over the period 1499 to 1507 and Bradgate House was given only the minimum possibly 1509 till 1511, with major progress being made maintenance necessary to keep it weatherproof for a between the years 1523 and 1530. The marquess had caretaker or tenant . Then, about 1603, Henry Grey, lord spent much time in exile in France and was ready to Grey of Groby, re-established Bradgate as the family adopt the Renaissance influences which were entering home. After half a century of neglect there was doubtless the country through the royal court. Among these was much need for renovation and improvement. The first the idea that a house should be symmetrical and the later earl of Stamford entertained King Charles I for one day addition of the corner towers would also greatly add to in 1634 and similarly in 1697 the second earl received this effect. William III, but the records of both visits have also been lost. 22 23

Bradgate House When Bradgate House was built it was at the forefront In 1720 the 2nd earl died childless. His cousin, who of English country house design, on a number of counts. inherited the title and estates, already had a splendid For the first time in many centuries the British home of his own in Staffordshire, and saw no reason to nobility felt secure without the need for moats, remove himself to the old-fashioned house at Bradgate. battlements and thick walls. Bradgate was the first When the 3rd earl's son married Mary Booth in unfortified stately home to be built in Leicestershire. 1736, Bradgate was reoccupied by the young couple. It was built from brick – a building material which Their first two children, including George Harry, the had barely been used in Britain since the Romans left, future 5th earl, were born there, and baptised at 1,000 years before. Newtown Linford church. However, the 3rd earl died With its elegant proportions and use of large in 1739, and his son took possession of Enville Hall and mullioned windows, Bradgate was an early example of the Staffordshire estates. After three years at Bradgate Tudor architecture. Henry and his wife clearly felt no desire to linger in, or However, in other respects it was firmly traditional. maintain, their draughty 230 year old mansion. The ground plan of a cross hall flanked by two wings is Without an occupant Bradgate fell into disrepair and an ancient design, used for everything from farmhouses by the end of the century was no more than a ruin. to palaces. Also the towers call to mind a medieval castle. Later houses, such as Hardwick Hall, built 100 years after COURTYARD OR GARDENS Sketch Plan of Bradgate, departed from such elements far BRADGATE more thoroughly. Rear Entrance HOUSE The house was built around three sides Tower 30 feet SERVANTS’ SUMMER 10 metres of a central courtyard. The Great Hall was GREAT HALL originally the dining hall for the whole HALL PARLOUR household – servants and masters. Later the Stair TERRACE case Possibly family dined in their living quarters in the MAIN Steps down ENTRANCE Steps down east wing. into cellar into cellar

Over the centuries the house was altered BAKERY and added to. One notable change was the KITCHEN COURTYARD

WINTER

PARLOUR new bay window added to the Great Hall. Tower CHAPEL KITCHEN this provided panoramic views of the hills to the north, and was built by the 2nd earl of “Lady Jane’s Tower” Stamford for the visit of William III in 1696. Walls of the original building of Walls either of later additions, or possibly A more curious change appears to be the around 1500 even 20th century ‘reconstructions’. addition of assorted utilitarian buildings Early additions to the house Foundations of a less substantial building Alteration made in 1696 from either the period after the house was across what had been a broad and imposing abandoned, or from earlier than 1500. (n.b. the order of construction suggested above is frontage. The date of these is unknown. largely speculative) 24

Where Was the Entrance to Bradgate House? With very slight documentary evidence, and ruins Knyff ’s engraving, (shown on page 26), on the other that have been heavily altered and ‘restored’, there are hand, shows a broad avenue towards Anstey, to the many details of Bradgate House that remain very south, which, combined with the appeal of a dramatic unclear, none more so than the position of the main courtyard entrance, and a doorway which would lead entrance. directly into the Great Hall, have led others The majority of Tudor buildings have an entrance to suggest a main entrance facing the south. on the north side, which has led some to suggest the With a period of occupation doorway facing Old John was the main entrance. spanning 230 years it is even possible Alternatively, of the only two contemporary that the house saw considerable drawings, the map by Kiddiar (see p. 33) shows a major alterations to the layout, including avenue from Cropston, leading some to suggest that changes to the position of the guests arrived through an east door, via the garden. main entrance.

This reconstruction shows Bradgate House as it may have looked at the time of Lady Jane Grey

Used by kind persmission of Joy Geary and Loughborough University. 25

Chronology of Bradgate House 1485 – Thomas Grey, 1st marquess of Dorset, returns fully restored to baron Grey of Groby, and at about from France following Henry Tudor’s victory at the same time, Bradgate House is re-occupied. Bosworth Field. In 1488 Thomas sets about 1628 – Henry Grey is made earl of Stamford. improving his manor house at Groby. 1634 – Charles I and queen Henrietta visit Bradgate. 1490s – He abandons the work at Groby and makes a 1696 – William III visits at Bradgate. start with a new mansion in his expanded deer park 1720 at Bradgate. – 2nd earl dies with no surviving childlren His cousin becomes 3rd earl, resident at Enville Hall. 1501 – Thomas dies with Bradgate only just begun. 1737 – Future 4th earl is living at Bradgate, where his 1501 – His son Thomas, the 2nd marquess begins serious eldest son was born. He moves to Enville in 1739, work on Bradgate House. on the death of his father. 1520 – Thomas completes the mansion. Mid to late 1700s – Bradgate House falls into increasing 1540s – Lady Jane and her sisters grow up at Bradgate. disrepair, finally becoming derelict. 1554 – Bradgate is confiscated following the failed 1883 – 7th earl dies childless. Bradgate does not follow attempt by Henry Grey to put Jane on the the earldom. throne. 1928 – Cecily Grey sells Bradgate to Charles Bennion, 1560s – Bradgate is re-granted to the Greys by who presents it to the City and County of Leicester. the crown, but under severe conditions. 1603 – Bradgate and other estates are 26

This drawing by Leonard Knyff is the earliest known illustration of Bradgate House, and dates to about the year 1700, during the time of the second earl of Stamford. The view is from the north, looking towards Anstey. The unfamilar rocky outcrop in the foreground is probably the knoll now covered by the trees of Dale Spinney. 27

4. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PARK.

The first marquess of Dorset had a grand design for fence which separated the park from the surrounding his park, which was to furnish a suitable setting to the land and which kept in the deer. This was a long and splendid house while also accommodating the sporting costly business since the replacement was to stretch over and other recreational needs of the family and guests. six miles in length, twice as long as the old one. Much Not least, it would proclaim to the whole district and of the line of the redundant pale can be detected beyond that Thomas Grey was a force to be reckoned ‘abandoned’ within the present park. One such section with. is crossed by the river and the tarmac drive where Little The first part of the operation involved the removal Matlock gorge opens out at the greensward. (See page of the ancient pale – that is, the bank, ditch and wooden 16). At the same time the moated site where the park

The Bradgate of John Leland. ‘From Leicester to Bradgate by ground well wooded three than a hill of the keep that the castle stood on which is very miles. At Bradgate is a fair park and a lodge lately built there notable; but there is now no stone work upon it. And the late by the lord Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset, father of Henry marquess Thomas filled up the ditch, intending to make a that is now marquess. There is a fair and plentiful spring of herbare (pleasure garden) there. The older part of the work water brought by Master Brook as a man would judge which is at Groby was made by the Ferrers. But newer works against the hill through the lodge, and thereby it driveth a and buildings there were erected by the lord Thomas, the first mill. The park was part of the old earls of Leicester lands, marquess of Dorset; among which works he began he erected and since by heirs general it came to the lords Ferrers of the foundation and walls of a great house of brick and a tower Groby, and so to the Greys. The park of Bradgate is a six but that was left half finished of him, and so it standeth yet. miles compace.’ This lord Thomas erected also and almost finished two towers Thus wrote the Tudor scholar John Leland of brick in front of the house, as respondent on each side to (1506-52) on his visit to Bradgate in the 1530s. His the gatehouse.’ description of the Park and Lodge as ‘fair’ notes his approval and indicates that both were in an advanced The ancient castle of Groby was of the simple motte state of development if not complete. He also records and bailey type. It had been erected in the late eleventh the presence of the leat taking water from the River Lyn century, on the site of an earlier structure, and was to the house. His description of the length of the destroyed about a hundred years later. Thomas Grey perimeter (compace) shows how the park has been had adapted the remains, including the mound which reduced in size again, most notably by the reservoir is still extant, to create a garden for the manor house of constructed in 1870. Its length now is nearer four miles. his Ferrers ancestors. The work at Groby seems to have ‘From Bradgate to Groby a mile and a half much by been abandoned at a late stage in favour of his house at woodland. There remain few tokens of the old castle other Bradgate. 28 keeper lived, near the present ruins, was abandoned and Further, there was the matter of access to the common the new guardians of the deer were rehoused outside the grazing on Charnwood Forest for the stock of the park. inhabitants of Thurcaston. This was solved by the With the same scant regard to tradition which he marquess agreeing to leave a tongue of land leading to had shown with the design of the house and with little the gate, which was the actual point of access and which thought of expense, the marquess laid out his new was located by the modern Hallgates car park. boundaries in straight lines across the landscape. The The first marquess’s greatest problem was what to courses of the great north and west pales in particular do with the village of Bradgate. He felt that his family showed little heed for thoughts of topographical and guests should not have to bear the sight of the advantage that might reduce the costs of keeping deer in ordinary people going about their daily grind. Here he and people out. The road from Newtown to Anstey was was quite ruthless. In league with two more landowners, re-routed in similar manner and is still followed by the those two local scions of the Church, the abbot of modern road. Later generations of the Greys were to find Garendon and the prior of Ulverscroft, he ordered the the upkeep of these ambitious boundaries too costly and, demolition of the villagers’ houses. It is recorded that with an eye to the long-term, replaced them with stone they left ‘in grief’. walls. Some of the ridge and furrow of the ploughland of With all these bold actions came problems. The the lost village can readily be seen in the north-east of expansion of the park was taking grazing land which otherwise supported the domestic stock of his tenants. A balance had to be struck between their continued ability to pay their rents and their lord’s demands for a fine park. Also, the marquess had to ensure that legitimate travellers were able to use the tracks constituting the king’s highway across Charnwood Forest, including the ancient route between Newtown Linford and Hunt’s Hill (Old John car park).

When Thomas Grey enlarged his deer park, the old boundary pale was left as a bank and ditch within the new park. It can be seen in a number of places. This very marked stretch is in the deer sanctuary area, south of the River Lyn 29 the park, to the right of the tarmac drive which leads mill, required a more elaborate solution, for which an from Hallgates car park to the deer barns. The locations unknown but obviously most competent engineer was of the former village houses are much less obvious, (see engaged. In an area outside the pale of the old park, a page 14). Small scattered patches of ridge and furrow can dam was constructed across the River Lyn. This was also be found in others parts of the park but, to be fair to close to the well known wishing stone upon which the marquess, these were probably abandoned long generations of children have been placed and told to before he set about his new scheme. By the time the new make a wish. Behind the dam a sizeable lake was created, boundaries of the park had been finalised the ancient stretching towards the present Newtown Linford car hunting park of the Ferrers had been transformed into park. A ditch-like canal known as a leat was dug and in a park of the times. It covered about a thousand acres places banked. It followed the contours of the land from and contained the foundations of his proposed mansion. an outlet of the dam and travelled in a wide sweep, The first two marquesses were educated men and allowing just sufficient fall for the water to flow, until it had travelled in exile abroad. It was probably the higher ended in the pond behind the house. This pond degree of civilised living they had seen in France which provided another head of water to drive the mill, and persuaded Thomas the father to introduce unusually also serve the fishpond. The leat is still clearly visible advanced facilities to the new house, particularly in the along its length, except in the immediate vicinity of the matters of water supply and drainage. river and across the main drive. Drinking water was no problem. A spring on the A house fit for a marquess demanded a garden of high ground to the north of the house was fed along a similar good taste, style and grandeur. Such a garden was pipe by gravity. A larger volume of water, sufficient to indeed laid out but the remains of it today give problems flush out the drains under the house and turn the water of interpretation similar to those presented by the ruins

This old postcard shows a stretch of the water channel, known as a ‘leat’, which would have carried water to the house and watermill. Most of the leat remains intact, (see overleaf) but this section was levelled, probably during dredging work on the river. While the house was occupied there was a dam across the river, probably just beyond the large oak tree in the centre of this picture. This would have raised the water level, allowing it to flow along the leat, which channelled it for about a kilometre (over ½ mile) to a pond behind the house. 30

of the house. The large rectangular area adjacent to the east side of the building, known to later generations as ‘the tiltyard’, shows many of the typical features of a garden of a 16th century nobleman. Within the high boundary walls raised grassy walkways provided the strolling guests with a view, not only of the delights of the garden but also of the park and its deer beyond. Elegant flights of steps at four points led walkers down to the centre of the garden. Here were the four great parterres – flat, rectangular areas, possibly with flower beds in formal designs or, as Knyff seems to indicate, areas of turf cut into intricate patterns. Unfortunately such features do not belong only to gardens of the years of the first half of the 16th century. Most could probably be found in many of the fashionable gardens which existed to the outbreak of the civil war a century later. The problems of dating the development of the gardens mirror those with the building of the house. The apparent absence of a prospect mound, a prominent and important feature in

By following the contours along the side of the valley, but descending just enough to keep the water flowing, the leat was able to provide a plentiful supply of water to a point well above the level of the river. The photograph above shows the leat where it approaches Bradgate House. As well as providing for the household needs, and supplying several fish ponds, the water provided power for a watermill. The site, shown on the right, is on the east side of the house, where the water could drive the waterwheel before rejoining the river. 31

any Elizabethan garden, could be accounted for by the wall, but the raised central path is still present. Early air absence of the Greys during the second half of the 16th photographs show low planting ridges which may century. Any developments by Henry Grey account for the trees on Knyff’s drawing made about (c1510-1554), as third marquess and subsequently duke 1700. Similar beds to the north of the central path can of Suffolk, have not been detected. be detected from the air and are also visible on a careful The recovery of the family fortunes in the late 16th inspection of Knyff’s drawing. The realignment was also and early 17th centuries is reflected in changes in the achieved by the creation of a large rectangular garden. The Tudor garden was retained by aligning it compartment, also taken from the park, which extended with the house on an east-west axis. This was achieved along the northern edge of the house and the two by the addition of a second rectangular enclosure of land gardens. It was subdivided by hedges and fences and had taken in from the park. It adjoined and lay below that lawns and an orchard. The pond was present, described. At some point it lost its northern boundary surrounded by bushes and a small spinney. Earlier 32

fishponds were converted into formal ponds and the leat A view of the garden and the ruins, from the east gate. The from the pool was straightened to resemble a canal. To rectangular parterres (the sunken area in the centre of the an educated family like the Greys, these features were picture), and the raised walkway bordering them, are clearly not only pleasing to the eye but had intellectual visible and are typical elements of a Tudor garden. meaning. The house, gardens and formal ponds can be seen, viewed from At some point in the very early 18th century, in the the north, in the aerial photograph on the previous page. time of the second earl of Stamford and after Knyff’s visit, an impressive avenue of trees was planted. It led further major change. Could there be much doubt that from the eastern boundary wall of the garden through had the Greys, ever leaders in fashion, still been resident the park, across land now covered by the reservoir, in at Bradgate, they would have called in the services of the the direction of Cropston. This planting was following leading garden designers of the times, such as contemporary developments in the ever-changing ‘Capabilty’ Brown and Humphry Repton, and thus fashions of garden design. Unfortunately, it has left no changed in a major way the landscape of the park? By a trace on the modern landscape. It is interesting to reflect stroke of fortune, this historic place has retained much that it was the effective abandonment of his Bradgate of the world before 1750 for the delight of later property by the third earl which saved the park from generations. 33

This detail of a map by Nicholas Kiddiar, dated 1746, is, along with Kniff's engraving shown on page 26, the only pictorial evidence we have of Bradgate before the house was ruined. The drawing of the House, confusing though it is, suggests an entrance to the south (towards the bottom of the page). Details of the garden show clearly, as does the splendid avenue of trees leading away to the east – a feature typical of the early 18th century. Used by kind permission of the Enville Estate. Overleaf: Part of the canal feature which was added to the gardens in the 17th century. 34 35

5. THE GREYS IN TUDOR TIMES

The second marquess of Dorset was a great friend of launching of a new warship named after her: the the young Henry VIII when he was the slim and carefree Princess Mary Rose. The wreck of this unfortunate Prince Hal. A group of high-born young men were vessel has now been raised from the mud of the Solent. always to be found with the prince, playing tennis, The Brandons had a son, who died in his early teens, shooting at the butts, jousting, hunting and wrestling. and two daughters, Frances and Eleanor. Frances Another member of the group was Charles Brandon, married Henry, third marquess of Dorset, son of her with whom Henry’s young sister, the Princess Mary, was father’s old crony, Thomas Grey. in love. Henry and Frances were not an endearing couple. After he became king, Henry sent a protesting Mary Henry had disentangled himself from a contract to off to France to marry King Louis XII, an ailing marry Katharine FitzAlan, daughter of the earl of widower of 53. To Mary — young, beautiful and Arundel, when the chance of the King’s niece came vivacious — it was like being given a prison sentence; along. He was selfish, weak and ambitious. Frances was but then she looked on the bright side and told her arrogant and energetic. Although her place in the line of brother that she would marry this time to suit him and succession was fairly low, she did not allow people to next time to suit herself. Sure enough, Louis died after forget her royal status. She and Henry had three only three months of marriage. Mary was kept in close surviving children: Jane, Katherine and Mary. custody for a time while Louis’ successor ensured that Henry VIII, by his six wives, also had three children: she was not in danger of producing an heir. Then Henry the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, and Prince Edward. sent an envoy to bring her back to England. Oddly, the When Henry died, in 1547, the crown passed to the frail man he sent was Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. nine-year-old Edward VI. Knowing how his sister felt about Brandon, Henry A king who was a minor always left the way open for had taken the precaution of making the duke promise manipulative adults to seize control, and this happened that their relationship would be strictly formal. He again as it had after the death of Edward IV in Elizabeth reckoned though, without Mary, who greeted the object Woodville’s time. It was even worse when there was no of her passion with tantrums and floods of tears, begging clear agreement about the direct line of succession, him to marry her as she was sure she was about to be should the young king not live to provide heirs of his trapped into some new diplomatic match — which was own. very likely. Unable to withstand her entreaties, he married her. A great row ensued, but Henry had a way Lady Jane Grey. of getting things to work to his advantage. He Lady Jane Grey was born at Bradgate Park in October re-admitted the couple to court on the payment of a 1537, and, according to tradition, was christened in the heavy fine, which included Mary’s dowry, the expenses Parish Church at Newtown Linford. Her arrival was of her first wedding and all her jewels. This put the rather eclipsed by the birth the same month of the future Brandons in debt for the rest of their married life. Back Edward VI, followed, two weeks later, by the death of his in England, Mary and her husband attended the doomed mother, Jane Seymour. 36

From the beginning, Jane’s parents had high The Line of Succession ambitions for their daughter. They dreamt that one day At the time of Edward VI’s accession, the next ten she would be queen — the wife of her cousin, Prince people in line for the throne were all female, and there Edward. Although her parents preferred to spend their were several interpretations of the order in which they days hunting deer, hawking, or stirring up factional should be ranked. Placing them in what would now be conspiracies, they ensured that Jane had every seen as the rightful succession, they were: educational advantage. It was the time of the New Learning; the Renaissance of classical culture had 1. Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s eldest daughter (but she had spread across Europe during the previous two centuries, been disinherited under the Act of Succession of 1534, due and had now reached England. Their daughter had to to the annulment of her father’s marriage to her mother, be made fit for her future role. Katherine of Aragon). Jane, who received little affection from her parents, 2. Elizabeth, his younger daughter (but she had been found her greatest joy in studying. Her father brought a disinherited by her father when her mother, Anne Boleyn, young clergyman, John Aylmer, who later became was beheaded). Bishop of London, to Bradgate to teach his daughter. Jane loved her lessons, and became renowned for her 3. Mary, Queen of Scots, grand-daughter of Henry’s eldest scholarship. sister Margaret Stewart, who had married James IV of When she was nine, her parents sent her away from Scotland. Bradgate to learn the ways of the highest society. She 4. Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret Stewart by her therefore joined the Princess Elizabeth in the household second marriage. (But both Scottish claimants were of Katherine Parr, widow of Henry VIII, and a woman discounted to prevent the English crown falling to the of fine cultural tastes. After Henry’s death, Katherine Scottish kings; which is, of course, exactly what happened was still the first lady of the land, and her house became in due course. ) a meeting place for an intellectual sisterhood of high-minded Protestant women. Jane enjoyed the 5. Frances Grey, elder daughter of Henry’s sister Mary. academic environment and also found in Katherine the 6. Frances’ eldest daughter, Jane. love and tenderness which were so sadly missing in her parents. 7. Frances’ second daughter, Katherine. A few months later Katherine Parr married Thomas 8. Frances’ youngest daughter, Mary. Seymour, the Lord Admiral (described by Elizabeth as ‘a man of much wit and little judgement’). His early 9. Frances’ younger sister, Eleanor. morning romps in Elizabeth’s bedroom, still in his 10. Eleanor’s daughter, lady Margaret Clifford. nightgown and carpet slippers, did not amuse his wife, and Elizabeth was packed off into the country. Jane was Henry VIII’s will stated that if the direct line should a more valuable commodity. The Lord Admiral fail, the crown was to pass to his niece Frances. He was persuaded her father to pay £2,000 (or at least a few probably not entitled to make such a stipulation, but hundred on account) for her to become his ward; in it brought tragedy both to those who, by their greed, return he would arrange for her to be married to King had only themselves to blame, and also to their Edward. innocent victims. 37

Grey Family Tree: Part one – The Claim to the Throne Edward Grey Jacquetta = 1) Duke of Bedford Richard Created Lord Ferrers and of Luxemberg = 2) Sir Richard Woodville Duke of York Baron Grey of Groby in Earl Rivers (Executed 1469) 1446 (Died 1456)

Sir John Grey = Elizabeth Woodville = 2) Edward IV Richard III Lord Ferrers of Groby Eldest daughter, but 6th of (1442 - 1483) (1452 - 1485) (1432 - 1461) 10 children. (1437 - 1492)

Sir Thomas Grey Sir Richard Grey (1451 - 1501) beheaded at Pontefract Edward V Richard Elizabeth = Henry VII 1st Marquis of Dorset Castle in 1483 (1470 - 1483) (1473 - 1483) (b. 1466) (1457 - 1509) BUILDER OF BRADGATE HOUSE Princes in the Tower. defeated Richard III Assumed murdered in 1483 at Bosworth Field in 1485 Thomas Grey (1477 - 1530) Arthur Henry VIII Margaret Mary = 1) Louis XII 2nd Marquis of Dorset (1486 - 1502) (1491 - 1547) = James IV (1495 - 1533) King of France of Scotland = 2) Charles Brandon (1484 - 1545) Duke of Suffolk Mary I Elizabeth I Edward VI (1516 - 1558) (1533 - 1603) (1537 - 1553)

Henry Grey = Frances Note: in this and the 3rd Marquis of Dorset nee Brandon other family trees, the created Duke of Suffolk in 1551 (1517 - 1559) Grey shield denotes (1514 - 1554) successive heads of the Grey family.

Jane Katherine Mary (1537 - 1554, beheaded) (1540 - 1568) (1545 - 1578)

Bradgate House reconstruction, copyright © Alan Hamilton, 1994. Used by permission. 38

Katherine was overjoyed to find she was pregnant and Jane accompanied the couple to their Gloucestershire estate at Sudeley. Here a baby daughter was born, but a week later Katherine died. The young lady Jane Grey, aged 11, was the chief mourner at the funeral of the person she had come to love like a mother. Jane’s parents requested her return to Bradgate and she went home for a while. Then her parents changed their minds and sent the Admiral another £500 for her to go and live with his mother. Gossip had it that Thomas Seymour was planning to marry Elizabeth, or even Jane, himself, but his ambitions and conspiracies had gone too far: he was arrested for treason and executed. Jane went home again. A famous meeting at Bradgate between Jane and the scholar Roger Ascham was later recorded by him in his book ‘The Schoolmaster’. Ascham, who had known Jane in London, found her alone in the house, while the rest of the household were out hunting. She was reading Phaedon Platonis in Greek, and when he asked why she too was not out enjoying herself she replied that all their sport was but a shadow compared with the pleasure she found in Plato. “One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me is that he sent me so sharp and severe parents and so gentle a schoolmaster”, she explained. “For when I am Lady Jane Grey – an engraving from the late 19th century, of in presence of either Father or Mother, whether I speak, a portrait said to be hanging at that time in Bradgate House. keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it as it were in such weight, measure and weeping because whatsoever I do else but learning is full number, even so perfectly as God made the world; or else of grief, trouble, fear and wholly misliking to me.” I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea Roger Ascham used this encounter in his book to presently with pinches, nips and bobs and other ways encourage a more humane attitude to teaching children, (which I will not name for the honour I bear them) so for it was Alymer’s gentleness rather than her parents’ without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, harshness which was unusual. till time come that I must go to Mr Aylmer, who teacheth Jane began to write to Aylmer (in Greek), and also me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements (in Latin) to Henry Bullinger, chief pastor of the radical to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am church in Zurich, who encouraged her to learn Hebrew. with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on Bullinger and other Swiss reformers hoped that Jane 39 would marry Edward VI, and steer England into the He saw one solution, and that was to wed his last establishment of a more truly Protestant church. unmarried son, lord Guildford Dudley, to the first On one sad day in 1551 Frances Grey’s two eligible female in the line of succession: Lady Jane Grey. half-brothers died at Cambridge University of what was The Suffolks were agreeable, and Frances agreed to probably influenza. Suddenly Frances was heir to the forego her own superior claim in favour of her daughter. Brandon estates, for her father had died six years before. Jane was bullied and abused until she agreed to marry a The marquess of Dorset was given Brandon’s title; boy she scarcely knew, and whose father she distrusted. Henry and Frances were now the duke and duchess of The wedding took place on May 25 1553 at the Suffolk. In the same year the powerful John Dudley was Northumberlands’ house in London. It was a triple created duke of Northumberland. His mother, Elizabeth wedding, for at the same time Jane’s sister Katherine, Grey, was related the Suffolks, and the Greys and the aged 13, was married to lord Herbert, and Dudleys were both ambitious. In April 1552 the king Northumberland’s daughter Catherine Dudley married became ill with the measles. It soon became clear that another Leicestershire noble, lord Hastings, son of the tuberculosis had taken hold, and by the next spring he earl of Huntingdon, of Ashby de la Zouch Castle. was weak and thin and spitting blood. Everything was done in such a rush, that the brides, John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, realised bridegrooms and their mothers all wore outfits that the king was likely to die before he could produce borrowed from the royal store. an heir. He also knew that under either Mary or Edward knew he was seriously ill, and dreaded a Elizabeth he would certainly lose his high position; at Catholic succession under Mary, so he did not take worst he would lose his head. much persuading to draft a memorandum bequeathing

By tradition the tower on the right of this picture is known as ‘Lady Jane’s Tower’. As it was the tower adjoining the living quarters it is certainly an area of the mansion that would have been familiar to Jane, as it would to all those who occupied Bradgate House over the centuries. 40 the crown to Frances Grey, duchess of Suffolk, and her Majesty grant me such spirit and grace that I may govern male heirs (for she had not given up hope of producing to Thy glory and service, to the advantage of this realm.” a son). Then, realising time was too short for that, he The next day Jane was taken down the river to the changed the wording and bequeathed the realm to the Tower of London, and entered as a palace the place that lady Jane. Like his father, he seemed to think he could became her prison. It was her last journey. In the royal leave the crown of England to anyone he chose, as if it apartments, some of the royal jewels were brought out, were just part of his estate. But Henry VIII’s 1544 Act of including the crown, which was placed on her head. It Succession remained on the Statute Book. was explained that another crown would be made for her Jane now found herself married into a family she husband. Jane then realised for the first time the full hated, and refused to live with them. She was told extent of Northumberland’s ambition, and showed that something of the scheme which was afoot, but refused she would never have been the pliant figurehead he had to believe a word of it, convinced it was all part of a plot assumed. Her own claim to the throne was tenuous; to make her return to the Northumberlands. There was Guildford’s was non-existent. She could make her a furious row between the two duchesses: Guildford’s husband a duke if he wished, she stormed, but never mother maintained that if Jane would not live with king. A furious family row ensued. them, her son must go to the Greys. Jane’s mother did Meanwhile, Northumberland was trying to trick not want the expense of housing a son-in-law. At length Mary into riding into a trap. He sent a messenger to Jane was dragged off to her husband’s family once again, Hertfordshire, where she was staying, claiming that the where she promptly became ill. She was convinced they king was desperately ill and asking for her. She was saved were trying to poison her (which shows how little she by Nicholas Throckmorton, who sent her goldsmith to understood their real motives). She was allowed to go to warn her, and instead of riding to London she went to Chelsea to recuperate. Norfolk, where she had good friends. On July 6th 1553 the king died. Northumberland On Monday July 10th, 1553 Jane was proclaimed took control. His plan was to proclaim Jane queen, and queen in London, and a printed proclamation was then inform Mary that she was disinherited. It was not prepared for distribution around the country. When a until three days later, on Sunday July 9th, that the letter arrived from Mary, directing the Council to unsuspecting Jane was brought to Syon House, another proclaim her queen, it was clear that they would have to Dudley residence. On arrival she was amazed and capture her. Northumberland set about raising an army embarrassed when the whole company, including her and left London with 3,000 men; Mary had now taken own parents, knelt before her. Then Northumberland herself to Framlingham Castle in Suffolk where men announced that the king was dead and that, as he had were gathering to support her. disinherited his sisters, Jane was now Queen of England. No battle took place. As Mary’s army grew, This was dreadful news; Jane trembled and sobbed Northumberland’s deserted. The peers realised the way and fell. When at last she could speak, it was to say that the wind was blowing, and a group of them hastily the lady Mary was the rightful heir. This did not please changed sides, proclaiming Mary in Cheapside. The the company, who bullied and cajoled her till she gave people went wild with excitement. Church bells pealed, in, with a typical prayer of submission: “If what hath bonfires were lit, and Londoners danced all night. They been given to me is lawfully mine, may Thy Divine had no doubt that Mary was their rightful queen, rather than an almost unknown little red-haired girl. 41

Mary entered London in triumph on August 3rd, When she knew her end was near, Jane sent her with the Princess Elizabeth at her side. Jane and Greek testament to her sister Katherine, inscribing it Guildford were kept in the Tower. Northumberland was with the advice, “It will teach you to live and learn you executed, but Jane’s father was granted his freedom after to die.” She does not appear to have sent a letter to her a plea from his wife. There is no record of her mother mother, nor to her husband, who was also to die. asking for a pardon for Jane. On Monday February 12 1554, Jane watched from Jane and Dudley were allowed a considerable her window as Guildford was taken away to public amount of liberty within the Tower. Although she was execution on Tower Hill; she was still watching as the nominally under sentence of death, Mary knew that Jane cart bearing his body and head, wrapped in a cloth, was not herself a conspirator, and intended eventually returned to the Tower. to entrust her to some loyal noble with a suitably remote Jane was granted the privilege of a private execution estate. on Tower Green. She was dressed in black and carried Then Mary married the King of Spain. Nothing an open prayer book. On the scaffold she made the could have made her more unpopular; it led to war with customary farewell speech; her beloved tutors and France and hysteria at home. Plots again abounded. correspondents must have been proud when she used With a stupidity verging on the insane, Jane’s father the occasion to deliver a short, but impeccably and his brothers allowed themselves to get involved in Protestant, sermon. a rebellion led by Thomas Wyatt, who marched on Her loyal waiting women, Mrs Ellen and Mrs London before being defeated. Suffolk and his brother Tilney, assisted her with her clothing and gave her a John fled to the old family manor house at Astley, near handkerchief to put over her eyes. She forgave the Nuneaton, and hid in the park, where they were betrayed executioner and asked him to despatch her quickly. and discovered: the duke hiding in a hollow tree and his When the blindfold was put on, she was unsure where brother under a pile of hay. to go, and cried out “What shall I do? Where is it?” She This rebellion had nothing to do with Jane. The plan was guided to the block and lay down. The executioner was to supplant Mary with swung his axe and after just Elizabeth. But Mary’s heart sixteen years, lady Jane hardened and she listened Grey’s life was over. to those who encouraged When the news her to execute her cousin. reached Bradgate that the She gave Jane an escape lady Jane had lost her head, route; all the stubborn little according to legend the Protestant had to do was to woodsmen lopped the tops admit the error of her ways off the oak trees. Ancient, and turn Catholic. When pollarded oaks are one of priests were sent to her, the enduring features of Jane engaged them in Bradgate Park. theological arguments, and prepared herself for death. 42

Bradgate’s Ancient Oaks It has long been known that the age of a tree can be grazing height for the deer, is called pollarding. It determined by counting the rings in the trunk. Each seems most likely that this practice has given rise to the summer the tree puts on a little more growth and forms legend that when lady Jane Grey was beheaded the oaks another ring. The disadvantage of this method of of Bradgate were also ‘beheaded’. The year in question, dating was always that a tree had to be cut down before 1554, may very well have been a year when at least some the rings were counted. Dendrochronology enables of the oaks in the Park reached the stage where they living trees to be dated. It is done by withdrawing a were due for pollarding. narrow core from the trunk. Not only can the rings be Far from injuring or weakening the tree, pollarding counted in the normal way, but oak timber and living maintains the tree’s vigour since it prevents it from trees can be dated by comparing the rings on the core reaching old age which is characterized by decline, against a known profile built up from trees whose ages decay and finally death. It is noticeable that none of the are documented. This is possible because of different ancient oaks appear to have been pollarded for very growth rates each year, caused by varying weather and many years. other conditions. A warm wet summer will produce a wide ring for instance, while a drought will produce a narrow one. The oldest tree at Bradgate on which this technique has been used has been dated to 1595, rather later than lady Jane’s time. Some of the ancient oaks may be old enough to have been young trees when Jane was executed in 1554. Dendrochronological data suggests two distinct phases of oak tree planting in the park. The first was in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, and the second was towards the middle of the eighteenth century, when trees in the previous group would have reached maturity. The Bradgate Park Trust has engaged in further planting in recent years. One of the reasons why the oaks of Bradgate have lived for so long is the fact that at regular intervals over the centuries the tops have been cut to produce successive crops of poles. Such cropping, above the 43

6. AFTER LADY JANE

On February 17th, 1554, five days after his promised to get Adrian Stokes to write a letter which she daughter’s execution, Jane’s father, Henry the duke of would copy and send to Queen Elizabeth, but Suffolk, was put on trial at Westminster. Here he was unfortunately she died before the letter was sent. rather unlucky, for his judge was the brother of the girl Edward’s sister Jane then took a hand and he had cast aside in favour of Frances Brandon. He was encouraged the couple to marry in secret. Early one condemned to death, and executed on Tower Hill the December morning in 1560, Katherine and Jane following week. Financial troubles, which had dogged Seymour slipped away from court to Edward’s house and him throughout his life, followed him to the scaffold. A Jane fetched a minister, who read the marriage service, man in the crowd asked how he could get the money he pocketed his money, and disappeared. The couple were was owed. Henry told him to see his officers; at least he left alone for a short time, but the girls were back at didn’t have to worry about that any more. Whitehall in time for mid-day dinner. Henry’s brother Thomas was also executed, but his After a couple of further short meetings, Katherine youngest brother John, having a Catholic wife to began to suspect she was pregnant. She told Edward and intercede with the queen on his behalf, escaped to his sister Jane, but then everything went wrong. Edward continue the Grey succession for four more centuries. was sent to the continent and Jane died. Katherine was Bradgate, for the moment, was confiscated. alone and friendless, with a secret which could not be Frances Grey caused a sensation by marrying again kept secret for long. First she confided in her old friend three weeks after her husband’s execution. Her new Bess of Hardwick, who had once been her mother’s husband, Adrian Stokes, was not only fifteen years her lady-in-waiting, and had more recently made Katherine junior, but he was a member of her own household. They godmother to her daughter Elizabeth. Bess had married lived close to Bradgate, at Beaumanor, by the village of her second husband in the chapel at Bradgate House, on Woodhouse, but were sometimes able to visit the Court, August 20th 1547 (at two o’clock in the morning, which where Frances’s other two daughters were maids of astrologers had suggested was the most propitious time). honour to the queen. When she died she was given a full Now married to her third husband, the ambitious Bess state funeral at Westminster Abbey as befitted her rank. had no intention of becoming entangled with a foolish Although Mary Tudor had disposed of the oldest of girl from a dangerous family. the Grey girls, there were still two more to pose a Next, and worse, Katherine blurted out her troubles potential threat. To Katherine’s distress, her marriage to lord Robert Dudley, elder brother of Guildford and to lord Herbert was quickly annulled by her later to become earl of Leicester, who was up to his own father-in-law when it became an embarrassing ears in gossip linking his relationship with the queen connection. with the recent death of his wife. Katherine’s real troubles began when she fell in love Robert told Elizabeth, who was furious. Edward was with Edward Seymour, son of the late Lord Protector. recalled and the pair despatched to the Tower of After the death of Queen Mary, Edward told Katherine’s London. Here Katherine’s son was born, and was called mother he wished to marry her daughter. Frances Edward after his father. Meanwhile, the Privy Council 44 failed to find proof that a marriage had taken place, but Return to Bradgate fined the couple and continued to imprison them for After the death of Elizabeth in 1603, James I celebrated their foolishness. his accession to the English throne and ensured his Although they were supposed to be kept separate the popularity in the right places by granting new honours keeper of the Tower was sympathetic. When a second and restoring old estates. Henry Grey, son of lady Jane’s son was born, Elizabeth’s fury knew no bounds. Edward uncle, Sir John Grey of Pirgo, was created baron Grey of and his elder son were sent to his mother’s house, while Groby, and restored to the old family titles lord Bonville Katherine and the baby were moved around. Her last and Harington. He sold Pirgo (now part of the London lodging was at Cockfield Hall in Suffolk, the home of Sir borough of Havering), and moved to Bradgate Park. Owen Hopton. By this time Katherine was desperately The ornate alabaster monument in the chapel in the ill with tuberculosis. On January 27 1568 she called Sir ruins commemorates Henry and his wife Anne, Owen and gave him her rings: one with a pointed daughter of William, lord Windsor of Bradenham. diamond which Edward had given her when they Henry is clad in a complete suit of armour, while his wife plighted their troth; her specially made wedding ring wears the ruff and head-dress of the time. The three with five links of gold; and a ring engraved with a death’s shields below the figures show the arms of the Grey head, which she asked to be given, with the others, to family on the left and the Windsor family on the right; her husband, saying, “it is the picture of myself”. Then the centre shield shows both families: Grey impaled on she died, aged 27. Windsor. Above the tomb is displayed the achievement of arms showing quarterings of eight families in the Grey Lady Mary Grey pedigree: Grey, Hastings, Valence, Ferrers of Groby, There was no happy ending for any of the girls who were Astley, Woodville, Bonville and Harington. too close to the throne for their own good. The youngest Henry’s son John predeceased him, so the next sister, Mary, was so small that she is sometimes referred baron Grey of Groby and owner of Bradgate Park was to as a dwarf. She, too, contracted a secret marriage, his grandson, another Henry, who gave the family a though not an aristocratic one. When she was 19 she considerable boost by marrying Anne, co-heir of married Thomas Keyes, a middle-aged widower who William Cecil, second earl of Exeter, of Burghley House had been chosen for the position of sergeant-porter at near Stamford. Anne’s father died in 1623, and in 1628 court because of his great height. The wedding took her husband Henry was created earl of Stamford, in place in the porter’s rooms at Westminster in August acknowledgement of her Cecil inheritance. He was the 1565. When Elizabeth discovered, she had Thomas first of ten Grey earls of Stamford. thrown into the Fleet prison, and sent Mary off to the country until, in 1571, her husband died. Civil War Mary was heartbroken, but the following year she In 1634 Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria paid a visit was released, and lived in London for her few remaining to Bradgate as they travelled from Nottingham to years till she died in 1578, aged 32. Elizabeth reigned for Leicester, and were entertained by lord and lady another thirty years. Stamford. As Civil War loomed, however, the Greys came out solidly for Parliament. Lord Stamford was Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire, with the county militia under his command. In 1642, with matters 45

Grey Family Tree: Part two – After Lady Jane Thomas Grey = Margaret (1477 - 1530) 2nd Marquis of Dorset

Henry Grey = Frances Thomas Grey John Grey 3rd Marquis of Dorset nee Brandon (beheaded 1554) of Pirgo created Duke of Suffolk in 1551 (1517 - 1559) (d. 1564) (1514 - 1554) Henry Grey Jane Katherine Mary Baron Grey of Groby (d. 1614) (1537 - 1554, beheaded) (1540 - 1568) (1545 - 1578) = Guildford Dudley = Edward Seymour = Thomas Keys John Grey (c.1534 - 1554, beheaded) (1539 - 1621) (d. 1571) (d. 1611)

Edward Thomas Henry Grey 1st Earl of Stamford (c.1599 - 1673)

Thomas Anchitel John Grey Leonard Elizabeth= George Booth Lord Grey Grey of Enville (d.1709) Grey (d. 1690) Lord Delamere (1622 - 1684) (1623 - 1657)

Henry Grey Henry Booth 1st Earl of Warrington (1652 - 1694) Thomas Grey 3rd Earl of Stamford 2nd Earl of Stamford (1685 - 1739) (1654 - 1720) LAST EARL TO USE BRADGATE George Booth HOUSE AS PRINCIPAL RESIDENCE 2nd Earl of Warrington (1675 - 1758)

Two sons and a daughter, all died Henry Grey = Mary Booth in childhood 4th Earl of Stamford (1703 - 1772), only daughter (1715 - 1768) and heir of the Earl of Warrington LAST OCCUPANTS OF BRADGATE HOUSE 46 clearly coming to a head, he was anxious to get control The real fanatic of the family was lord Stamford’s of the arms which were kept in the Magazine, otherwise eldest son, Thomas. He revelled in the excitement, and known as the Newarke Gateway. While he was there the counted himself particularly fortunate to be in direct king arrived unexpectedly in town, causing the earl to opposition to Colonel Hastings. As commander of all the make a hurried departure, leaving his son and a group Parliamentary forces in Leicestershire, he saw to the of twenty-five officers and men barricaded inside. This garrisoning of Leicester, took a company to save defiance annoyed the king, but with only a small troop Gloucester, and won a battle at Newbury on his way to in attendance there was little he could do. London. While his father was pleading for money, lord The leading citizens of Leicester were in a dilemma, Grey was content with a letter of thanks. not wishing to upset either side and hoping everything Leicester was besieged by the Royalists, and almost would blow over. Eventually, as a compromise, it was laid to waste. Ashby Castle, on the other hand, was agreed to distribute the weapons and ammunition besieged by Parliament. When the war at last came to an around the county. end, Thomas, lord Grey of Groby, sat on the commission On August 22 1642 Charles raised his standard at which tried and condemned Charles I. ‘Tho Grey’ was Nottingham, and the war began in earnest. The Hastings the second signature on Charles’s death warrant, of Ashby de la Zouch, who were more or less permanent between the names of John Bradshawe and Oliver enemies of the Greys and on opposing sides during every Cromwell. He was nominated to the new Council of civil dispute from the Wars of the Roses to the Jacobite State, but already had a reputation as a trouble maker Rebellion, seized their chance. Four days after the war and was kept out of Parliament. Cromwell distrusted began, Colonel Hastings stormed Bradgate with a troop him. After involving himself in various lunatic groups of Royalists. No great damage was done, but some arms such as the Fifth Monarchy Men, and spending time in and ammunition were taken, as were, for some reason, the Tower, lord Grey died in 1657. the chaplain’s clothes. At any rate, everybody in Lord Stamford outlived his son by many years and, residence was very frightened. losing patience with the Commonwealth, came down in Lord Stamford was sent to the west country in favour of the Restoration of the Monarchy. This meant command of Parliamentary troops, while his eldest son, that he, too, spent time in the Tower. The accession of Thomas, lord Grey of Groby, took charge of the north Charles II brought some relief, but the Greys were midlands, including Leicestershire. always distrusted by the Stuarts. When the earl died in As time went on the earl became increasingly 1673, he was succeeded by his grandson, another disenchanted with the war. He was plagued with gout, Thomas. his generalship was criticised, and he was blamed for the loss of the west country. What is more, he complained, Fire at Bradgate his house had been ransacked and his tenants plundered The second earl of Stamford inherited his share of the so that they could not pay their rent; he had recruited a recklessness which afflicted the family at this period. regiment at his own expense and was now short of Bradgate was suspected of being a centre of treacherous money. He begged Parliament for a grant of £1,000 and activity and searched for arms. Thomas became leave to travel to France for the good of his health. This involved in the duke of Monmouth’s Rebellion: a plan was granted. to supplant the unpopular catholic King James II with one of Charles II’s illegitimate sons. He was arrested at 47

Bradgate and sent to the Tower for a while before being There was certainly a fire, which apparently began in the included in a general pardon. north west tower where the earl slept, but as the countess The Glorious Bloodless Revolution of 1688, which and her baby daughter only narrowly escaped with their brought William and Mary to the throne, improved lord lives, it seems unlikely that she deliberately started it. Stamford’s fortunes. He married Elizabeth Hervey, However, lord and lady Stamford were divorced. The whose father had just died and left her £100,000. The earl found another heiress, Mary Maynard, and married attractions of Bradgate were lost on Elizabeth, who did again. not enjoy being stuck in the middle of a deer park, and wrote to her sister that although the house was tolerable, This picture, taken from inside the ruins, shows the position of the country was a forest. and the inhabitants all brutes. the Great Hall, with cellar below. The largest window was a Her sister, according to tradition, wrote back suggesting bay, which was specially built for the visit of William III in she set fire to the place and run away by the light thereof. 1696. 48

King William’s Visit The second earl was described in 1705 by a The great event at Bradgate at this time was the visit of contemporary who said, “He doth not want sense; but William III in the summer of 1696. The Stamfords were by reason of a defect in his speech wants elocution; is a desperately keen to impress the king, hoping he would very honest man himself, but is very suspicious of shower honours and riches upon them. No expense was everybody who is not of his party, for which he is very spared: stables for a hundred horses were erected in the zealous; jealous of the power of the clergy, who, he is Park; one of the bridges over the brook at Anstey, known afraid, may some time or another inflame our Civil ever since as King William’s Bridge, was widened to Government. From a good estate he is become very poor, accommodate the king’s carriage; and a great new bay and much in debt. He is something above middle window was inserted into the great hall at Bradgate stature; turned of fifty years old.” House. This was for a visit which lasted one day. The Thomas Grey, second earl of Stamford, died without king was pleased by all he saw and thanked the direct heirs in 1720. There is a slate memorial stone to Stamfords for their hospitality, but they never recovered him and his second wife Mary in the floor of the Chapel financially from their extravagance. in the ruins. 49

Rabbits Rabbits were introduced into Britain by the Normans escaped from the enclosure and had established and, until the outbreak of myxomatosis in the 1950s, themselves in other parts of the park. Regular catching were always very plentiful in Bradgate. In the middle places called ‘pitches’ produced huge numbers of ages and beyond, rabbits – more usually known as additional animals. Although the numbers caught did conies – were kept in enclosures called warrens. They vary, the price the animals fetched remained were carefully fed and protected as a source of food for remarkably constant. In Webb’s time a couple in good the warrener’s owner at all seasons. Fences, banks and sound condition were worth 18d (7½p). Poorer stock walls prevented the animals from escaping. Those fetched 9d (4p) a couple. The profit in 1822 from rabbits individuals which did gain their freedom seldom lived from the park was £82. long in the wild, where hordes of predators, human and There were several commercial warrens on animal, eagerly took them. Charnwood Forest outside Bradgate and not all were The site of the main warren at Bradgate, marked on expertly managed. Rabbits regularly escaped from their early maps as ‘the Cunnery’ and now under the enclosures in such numbers that they were even able to reservoir, produced phenomenal numbers of animals in establish wild colonies on the open moorland. Here its time. In the five months from September 1759 to they competed with domestic stock. The close cropping February 1760, for example, 2,255 couples were and incessant nibbling of the rabbits reduced the value removed. In the early 1800s it was run by a warrener, of the sheep walks to almost nil. When the rabbits one Henry Webb, who was paid nine shillings (45p) a turned their attention to the crops of the local people week for his services. He was expected to maintain a there was such an outcry that the warrens were stock of rabbits at all times and to meet whatever eventually closed. At the same time changes in demands were made by his employers in terms of meat agricultural practices and the persecution by and skins. In good years and with skilful management gamekeepers of the rabbits’ natural predators allowed this was no problem. His rabbits bred mostly between the populations to extend their range. Thus the rabbit January and June. Does mated as young as six months secured a place as a familiar animal in the countryside. and had their young four weeks later. Moreover, most In the late nineteenth century rabbit shooting in the mated and conceived again only twelve hours after park by lord Stamford and his friends was part of the giving birth. Litters were around seven and seldom less sport. In the 1850s daily totals for January shoots were than three and some females produced as many as sixty from 1474 to 3075. In December 1861 a party of thirteen offspring each per year. Apart from predators and guns killed 3,333 rabbits in one day. In 1953 disease, Webb’s main problem was bad winters when myxomatosis swept through the park and reduced the large numbers had to be fed, largely on turnips, to population to a few hundred individuals. More than prevent starvation. In later years the warrener forty years on the populations are once more rising but employed assistants to catch the rabbits which had are still far from their pre-disaster levels. 50

7. THE DECAY OF BRADGATE HOUSE

As none of the second earl’s children survived, on his between them and their various parents for at least part death his estates passed to his cousin Henry, who lived of the year. The house was opened up and refurbished, at Enville Hall, near Stourbridge, in South and the year after their marriage their union was blessed Staffordshire. The new lord Stamford seems to have by the birth of a son and heir. George Harry Grey was been a particularly unpleasant character. He drank baptised at Newtown Linford Church on October 21st heavily and beat his wife, who eventually left him. Being 1737. Eighteen months later a daughter, Mary, was also settled in a house which had belonged to other branches born at Bradgate, and baptised at Newtown Linford of the Grey family for many generations, he seems to Church on April 30th 1739. have had no interest in either living at Bradgate or in This last occupation of Bradgate House was happy selling it. but brief. In November 1739 the 3rd earl of Stamford Despite their tempestuous marriage, the third earl died at Enville, and Harry and Mary came into their and countess produced two sons and five daughters, as Grey inheritance. They moved to Enville Hall, and well as three children who died in infancy. A significant Bradgate House was finally abandoned. event in the family fortunes took place in 1736 when lord When the house was boarded up, the furniture must Stamford’s heir, Harry, lord Grey of Groby, married a have been moved out, possibly to Enville. If no proper kinswoman, lady Mary Booth, daughter of the 2nd earl maintenance was taking place, every winter would make of Warrington. its depredation. Slates would be blown off the roof, The chances of this being a happy union would not letting in the rain; brick walls, in need of repointing, have seemed high. For a start, the bride, at 33, was 12 would become unsafe; perhaps the final straw was years older than her husband, and both parties had seen something like the breaching of the dam and the collapse their mothers (married for their money) either battered of the water and drainage system. In 1800 an old man or scornfully rejected. Mary Booth, an only child and related how in his youth the house had been complete, therefore an heiress, was the apple of her father’s eye. but by then it was a ruin, though the walls and towers Lord Warrington kept her as his companion at the family were higher than they are now. Once slates and bricks seat, Dunham Massey, near Altrincham, Cheshire, until were to be had for the carrying, local people were not his desire to ensure a succession overcame his reluctance slow in finding other uses for them. Look at the nearby to part with her. His grandmother, lady Elizabeth Grey, villages of Newtown Linford, Cropston and Thurcaston, was a daughter of the 1st earl of Stamford, and the Greys for example, and notice how many timber-framed and Booths were both for Parliament in the Civil War, houses are infilled with beautiful hand-made bricks, just so it appears the liaison was arranged by the families. It like those at Bradgate House! seems to have been a great success. Newtown Linford churchyard contains the graves of The Greys and Booths between them now owned several stewards, whose task it was to look after the Park: three major estates, at Dunham Massey, Enville, and John Marston, who died in 1724; Daniel Lambert, who Bradgate. So it was to Bradgate that the young couple died in 1761; and another Daniel Lambert, perhaps his came to begin their married life, putting some space son, who was the uncle of Leicester’s famous fat man. 51

Enville Hall Enville Hall near Kinver, South Staffordshire, belonged to a branch of the Grey family from about 1500. When the second earl of Stamford died childless in 1720 his cousin Henry, who inherited the title, was already Master of Enville, and never lived at Bradgate House, which was abandoned. Enville became one of the two principal seats of the family (with Dunham) until the twentieth century. It was rebuilt after a fire in 1904 and is still a private house, having passed to the relatives of Catherine Cocks, seventh countess of Stamford and Warrington, on her death in 1905.

Dunham Massey The Dunham estates, near Altrincham in north Cheshire, came to the Greys as a result of the marriage in 1736 between Harry, fourth earl of Stamford, and Mary Booth, daughter and heiress of George Booth, earl of Warrington. Successive earls have made their mark on Dunham Massey down the centuries. It stands in a deer park which is reminiscent of Bradgate. In the nineteenth century staff sometimes interchanged between the family estates, and management practices could be shared, particularly while William Martin was agent of all the Grey lands. The tenth and last earl of Stamford lived at Dunham until shortly before he died in 1976, after which, as he had arranged, the estate passed to the National Trust. The house contains numerous family portraits and other memorabilia and, along with its park and gardens, is open to the public. There is a restaurant and shop in the stable block. 52

For the next 150 years a succession of four eldest him, suffered ill health with bad grace, with disastrous sons were named George-Harry in order to reflect both effects on their marriages. family traditions: George for the Booths, Harry for the Greys. The importance of the Booth inheritance was Old John recognized when the title earl of Warrington was revived In 1786 the coming-of-age of the future sixth earl was for Mary Booth’s son, who became earl of Stamford and celebrated at Bradgate by a bonfire on the highest point Warrington. of the park, on a hill which was already shown as ‘Old This George Harry, who had been baptised at John’ on a map of 1754. There had been a windmill on Newtown Linford, made a good marriage, linking the this site in the 1740s. It may have been a post mill, the Greys to one of the country’s most prominent families. oldest windmill design, in which the whole of the mill His bride was Henrietta Cavendish Bentinck, whose and its machinery rest on a single post, so that it can brother, the third duke of Portland, became Prime turn, along with the sails, to face the wind. No trace of Minister. The Grey family fortunes fluctuated down the it remains. years as new sources of wealth were carefully garnered Old John Tower, by popular legend a beer mug memorial, was by some generations, only to be squandered by dissolute in reality a folly, beginning life as a ‘ruin’, later being heirs. Both the sixth earl and his son, who predeceased converted into a viewing tower for horse racing. 53

From the Diary of Viscount Torrington John Bing, viscount Torrington, visited Bradgate on a trout stream capable of any formation twines thro’ the his travels through England in the late eighteenth valley; but it would require a great sum to render it complete. century. Beneath the ruins and within old walls, Ld Stamford’s foxhounds, a noble and celebrated pack, are kept; these I saw, “Tuesday 8th June 1790. We left Leicester at eleven and honour’d with my approbation. Ld Stamford has a o’clock ... along a true Leicestershire road, of stones and hunting seat at two miles distance.” (Stewards Hay) sloughs ... (which) ... brought us to the village of Anstey and soon after to the confines of Bradgate Park. Bradgate has Torrington also went on to Ulverscroft where he been dismantled of its timber and its keeping (flock of sheep) lamented the actions of the local farmers who ‘destroy tho’ yet stocked with deer; and the house was long since burnt. wantonly’ the ancient building. It was, I conclude, and might be restored to, I am certain, a (Source; ‘Rides Round Britain John Byng, Viscount Torrington. Ed. Donald noble place; for the grounds are very bold and diversified, and Adamson Folio Society 1996) This engraving of the ruins, dated 1793, much the same time as when Viscount Torrington was passing by, shows the ruinous state of Bradgate House, 53 years after the Grey family finally moved out. The depleted state of the brickwork implies wholesale quarrying of the bricks, many of which can be seen in the houses of surrounding villags. (Engraving from J Nichols, vol IV, 1807-1811) 54

The Walls of Bradgate None of the walls in the park dates from its creation by of his long working life on the Bradgate estate. Thomas Grey. The external boundaries of his ‘new’ The repair and general maintenance of so many park of c. 1500 were originally laid out with a ditch and miles of wall was a perennial activity. In 1740 William bank topped with the traditional wooden paling. Lovet was paid 4 shillings (20p) for turfing four acres However, these were taken down in the 1740s to be (ie. furlongs) of walling. Sixty-eight years later, a replaced and augmented by the walls we see today. Oak member of the local family of Rudkin earned £2.10.2d paling had proved too expensive or difficult to replace (£2. 51p) for capping and turfing 220 yards (200 metres) after the Greys had abandoned the house and moved to of the park wall. In the 1860s members of the same Enville in Staffordshire. family, together with a team of men, were receiving The great walls marking the northern and western 8s.10d (44p) a yard for similar skilled work. boundaries were largely the work of two men, William The work of dating the walls has also come from a Coulson and Thomas Sketchley. In 1741 Coulson study of lichen flora growing on the individual stones. received 2½d (1p) a yard for building 5623 yards (3.19 Colonies of different species become established and miles, 5.1 km) of wall. The previous year, 5771 yards expand in a well recognised sequence of ‘pioneer’ open had been constructed, probably by the same man or by and ‘stable’ closed communities. The same technique the same team. Much of the total for the two years must can sometimes be used to date the walls of old buildings. have included the great central wall which now divides the ‘High’ Park from the ‘Low’ Park. A great deal of the south-east and south-west walls was erected between 1790 and 1795 and was probably the work of Thomas Sketchley. Between about 1831 and 1841 the sixth earl of Stamford established the now familiar spinneys in the High Park. They were planted primarily for the furtherance of pheasant shooting rather than for the benefit of the deer. The walling round these areas was started about 1828 and was the work of the celebrated Charles Firth, who appears to have spent most 55

The well-known legend of Old John states that at the the main archway became progressively smaller, celebratory bonfire, a central pole in the fire burnt resulting in the familiar ‘beer mug’ we see today. through and fell, killing the popular but possibly William Martin, ancestor of Sir Robert and Sir inebriated miller, who has become associated with the Andrew Martin, who were to give such outstanding name Old John. To commemorate the old man and his service as Chairmen of the Trustees of Bradgate Park, weakness for alcoholic liquor, so the story goes, a became agent for the Bradgate estates in 1793, when he hunting tower was built and was shaped like a beer mug. was only eighteen. He served the Grey family for the The truth is more confusing. Contemporary estate next fifty-five years, eventually taking charge of all their accounts record that Old John Tower was built in the estates. autumn of 1784, two years before the celebration The fourth, fifth and sixth earls of Stamford bonfire. The original tower, built by Thomas Sketchley (George-Harrys all) divided their time between Enville, of Anstey, appears to have been an open ‘folly’, or mock Dunham and their London house; the Leicestershire ruin, similar to that at Mow Cop in Staffordshire. Early estates were primarily a source of income. photographs show a second apperture and beyond that In 1842, Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, celebrated her fiftieth birthday by having a picnic in Bradgate Park. She herself chose the site for the picnic — under an ancient tree between the ruins and the stream. It afterwards became known as Queen Adelaide’s Oak, shown below.

more stone walling. These were removed during alterations undertaken in the mid 19th century by the seventh earl of Stamford and Warrington, when he laid out a practice circuit for his race horses around Old John. The tower was made into a viewing place, complete with fireplace, carpet and many home comforts. A stable block, where horses could be rubbed down, was built into the hillside, where a brick wall can still be seen. During the nineteenth century the ‘ruined wall’ beyond 56

The Deer It is very likely that there have been deer in Bradgate stags become locked in contests of strength and without a break since before the year the park was first stamina. Visitors should be very wary of approaching noted, in 1241. Indeed, it was to preserve the deer for deer at this time. hunting that the original park was created by the Fallow deer are smaller than red deer. The males Ferrers, Lords of Groby. To contain the deer, this are called bucks and reach a height of about one metre earlier park was surrounded by a bank and ditch, some at the shoulder. Their antlers are more flattened and of which can still be seen within the present park. A less pointed than those of the red deer, and the easiest well preserved section of the same bank remains way to tell the two species of deer apart is by looking at beneath the water of the reservoir. (See aerial their antlers (see the diagrams opposite). Fallow deer photograph on page 14.) shed their antlers in late spring, and they are about There are two species of deer at Bradgate: the red eight years old before the antlers reach their full size. and the fallow. The red deer is the largest of Britain’s In the summer the fallow deer have coats which are wild mammals and, although really an animal of reddish-brown dappled with large white spots, and the woodland, it is most usually thought of as roaming the tail area, known as the rump, is white, outlined in black. hills and mountains of the north and west. The males In winter the coat becomes grey-brown with light are called stags and the females hinds. During the underparts. summer months, the males have deep-brown or The female fallow deer is known as a doe and her reddish-brown coats, darker on the underside, with a young are called fawns. As with red deer, they are light yellowish area around the base of the short tail. In usually found near the bucks at rutting time in late winter the coats become darker and thicker. Adult stags autumn, but unlike the red deer, fallow deer live in have antlers which are used for fighting. Each spring mixed herds of bucks and does all winter. they shed them and over the following four months For the last two hundred years at least there have grow new ones. The furry skin covering them is called numbered upward of 300 deer on the Park, roughly half ‘velvet’ and is rubbed off against a tree or rock. red and half fallow. The chief limiting factor has always The hinds do not have antlers, and have their been the amount of grazing available. In the nineteenth young, the calves, in early summer. Each is left in a safe century, the deer competed with domestic grazers for place during the day while the mother feeds. As time the limited supply of food. These included horses, goes by the young one learns to follow its mother Galloway cattle, bulls, sheep, goats, mules and even around until it can fend for itself. llamas. Measures are being taken to control the bracken For most of the year the older stags live in separate which spreads over open areas, crowding out the grass. herds from the hinds and the young stags. In October Formerly local farmers, tenants of the Bradgate estate, and early November the sound of the red stags roaring were allocated a strip of bracken, which they cut and can be heard in the Park. This is the ‘rut’ or breeding stored in ‘fern stacks’ to use for winter bedding. season, when each stag gathers together a group of In the past, hard winters have seen deer perish in hinds and defends them with great determination. large numbers. In 1812 turnips were given, and today Challenges are met with the clash of antlers and rival regular winter feeds of hay are provided. 57

Annual cycle of red deer Annual cycle of fallow deer The inner ring shows The inner ring shows Hind (female) activity. Doe (female) activity. The outer ring The outer ring shows the Stag shows the Buck behaviour behaviour Red Fallow Deer Deer

Red deer Fallow deer antler, 6th head antler, 6th head 58

Bradgate Revisited in Scotland in 1854 when he received a telegram to say In 1845 the Grey family title passed to the that Bessie had died of a seizure. eighteen-year-old George-Harry, grandson of the sixth The hopeful society mamas knew they must let a earl, and Bradgate made a come-back. year’s mourning period pass before they could again The seventh earl was an immensely wealthy young parade their daughters. Before that time was up, man when he succeeded, with a rent roll of £90,000 a however, George-Harry had found himself another year. All the society mothers with daughters to place had scandalously unsuitable bride. This was Catherine (or their eyes on him. Instead, he eloped to Brighton with Kitty) Cocks, who came from Sturminster Marshall in Bessie Billage, the daughter of the bootman at his Dorset. Kitty was the fifth of seven children of a Cambridge college. Poor Bessie never took to being a farmworker father and a gipsy mother. One of her countess. When her husband took her to Enville, she brothers was already in gaol for horse stealing, and her could not get out of the habit of curtseying to vicars’ This photograph, probably dating from late in the 19th century, wives, and calling them madam. As she was clearly shows the ruins with the gable end of the west wing still intact. unhappy, George-Harry took a house at Hove where This blew down during a gale in 1896. Many of the walls in they lived for a while; then he got restless and began to the picture are of dry stone. It seems likely that bricks from the go off on sporting trips with his friends. He was fishing gable end were used to reconstruct some of these walls. 59

The Spinneys of Bradgate As early as the mid eighteenth century successive earls out. The usual species shot were pheasant, partridge of Stamford had well organised routines for hunting, and rabbit. The numbers of these accounted for by up shooting and fishing over their estates in four counties. to ten guns shooting over four to ten days could run to When resident in Leicestershire the family lived at several thousand. Twelve seasons in the late nineteenth Stewards Hay which was close to the site of the present century saw over 40,000 pheasants and 7,000 partridges quarry company’s offices by the A50 near Field Head. fall to the guns. During the same period upwards of The Greys were wealthy and well placed in Victorian 75,000 rabbits were despatched. One day one fortunate society. As such, they entertained a great deal, sharing marksman killed seven with one shot. The plantations with their more sporting guests their passion for in the high park were carefully sited so as to enhance shooting. and extend a day’s shooting. At the start a chosen The pastime of shooting for pleasure developed in spinney was beaten so that the birds were encouraged the early 1700s and reached a peak of popularity in the to escape by taking wing in the direction of a second late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of selected one. In the space between the two the guns were the inclosed Charnwood woodlands, and most of the in line waiting to take their toll. The same procedure open hilltops such as those at Bradgate seem to have was adopted between spinneys two and three and so on been used for shooting. until a satisfactory day’s sport had been declared. Other After the enclosure of Charnwood by Act of species such as hares, woodcock and snipe, which were Parliament in 1808 much of the land concerned came also incidentally involved, also fell to the hunters. As into the hands of the Greys. The fifth and sixth earls of late as 1850 there were still a few black grouse in the Stamford lost no time in planting up some of the bare park but, perhaps not surprisingly, they disappeared slopes in order, as much as anything, to improve the shortly afterwards. prospects for game. At the same time the highparkareaof Bradgate was planted with the series of spinneys we see today. A team of keepers was responsible for providing birds for the guns for the season which opened at Bradgate in October and ended in February, or earlier if the supply of game ran 60 sister Tamar had produced three illegitimate children Catherine was a very different character from Bessie in the workhouse when real disaster struck. The family’s Billage. If the staff and tenants at Enville expected thatched cottage burnt down and their father died of his another diffident and tearful girl, they found instead a burns. Their mother was taken into the workhouse until composed and elegant woman. Catherine could play to she was expelled for bad behaviour and sent to Bridewell. perfection any part which fate presented to her. She Catherine, at twenty, was left with two young sisters became the gracious lady bountiful, the supporter of to look after. Endowed with only their dark-eyed gipsy worthy charities, the loving wife and the affectionate beauty and their skill with horses, the three of them went aunt of her sisters’ illegitimate offspring, whom she to London to seek their fortunes. Here they fell in with brought to live under the extensive roof of Enville Hall. Jem Mason, who owned stables in Oxford Street. The Her own little Catherine was secretly fostered with a girls broke in ladies’ horses and became an equestrian nearby farming family, and later, it is said, married to a circus act, leaping through hoops of fire. Leicestershire farmer. Her existence was never divulged Catherine became attached to Percy Fielding, a to lord Stamford, who himself had at least one younger son of the earl of Denbigh. Fielding went off to illegitimate offspring unknown to his wife, but their fight in the Crimea, leaving Catherine pregnant. She marriage did not produce children. gave birth to a daughter, also named Catherine, in The 7th earl was a great sportsman, excelling at October 1854, and by the following spring was back at cricket and anything to do with horses. In 1855 a request Jem Mason’s stables. Here she caught the eye of the came from the Quorn hunt that he should be its new newly widowed George-Harry. He fell in love with her, Master. Having accepted the honour, he set up a pack of and Kitty Cocks, daughter of a gipsy, sister of a horse hounds and built up a stud of over eighty horses, with thief, mother of a secret daughter, became countess of the necessary kennels and stables. If he was to spend a Stamford and Warrington. good deal of time in Leicestershire he also needed somewhere suitable to live during the hunting season. His agent William Martin had just died, so he decided to use the site of his house, Steward’s Hay, near Field Head, for a new mansion. This vast brick Victorian pile, was called (confusingly) Bradgate House. The stables alone cost £30,000, and the house employed twenty indoor servants — two just to dress lady Stamford. The new Bradgate House at Stewards Hay, near Field Head, straddled the parish boundary bewteen Newtown Linford and Groby. It was built in the 1850s, and had as many windows as there are days in the year. In 1925 it was sold to a quarry company and was demolished. The stable block survives in a derelict state. 61

The Water Meadow A water meadow was a system to gain the benefits which At key intersections, such as the one shown in the natural flooding can give to a grassland meadow, in a photograph below, the sluices (now gone) directed the controlled way. By using water from a nearby stream to water along a system of brick-lined channels. When flood over the flat meadow in the early spring, nutrients these were full the water flowed slowly over the grass will be deposited, and ground frosts will be avoided. In on the very gentle slope, eventually rejoining the River these ways an early growth for grazing animals can be Lyn. This form of irrigation was known as ‘floating provided. downwards’, since the land involved had to be below At Bradgate the water meadow is the flat, usually the level of the take-off point of the water. green area between the ruins of Bradgate House and the The system was introduced to Bradgate in the deer barn, on the south side of the main drive. By using nineteenth century, and large amounts of money were a system of sluice gates water could be channelled from spent on its construction and maintenance. Although the River Lyn, along the substantial walled ditch that it has not been in operation for many years it is still that still runs a few feet from the tarmac drive. part of the park where deer can be most readily seen grazing. 62

George-Harry’s time with the Quorn was not an all very embarrassing, and as a result Catherine refused unqualified success. For one thing, he was expected to to hunt again. In 1863 lord Stamford gave up the hunt, take on the full expense of the hunt. Bradgate House was and Tattersalls held a sale of his hunters at Bradgate, also too distant from the hub of social life at Melton which was attended by eight thousand people. Mowbray. But much of the trouble was due to the George-Harry now turned his attention to attitude of local gentry, particularly the women, to lady Newmarket, where he built up an extensive racing Stamford. Her husband might be underwriting the establishment and spent a fortune on bloodstock. Full expense of the hunt, but that did not prevent them of enthusiasm, he laid out a practice race-course around referring to her as a ‘hippodrome dolly’. The men were Old John, marked by stones, some of which are still more inclined just to admire the sight of the countess in present. He had another course laid out in woods at the saddle. Enville, and hoped, by training his horses in such Catherine did not enjoy being the butt of gossip secluded locations, to steal a march on other columnists. Even worse, a London Music Hall ran for competitors. But everything went wrong. His horses eight weeks a show in which female impersonators scarcely ever won a race, and before long he held an played the parts of the Countess and the Strumpet (the auction at Newmarket to get rid of them. latter referring to another Quorn follower, known as His main interest then became shooting. At Skittles, whose career echoed Catherine’s own). It was Bradgate there was a good stock of pheasants, and farms

During the 19th century a Victorian gentleman of any standing collected exotic tree species and planted specimens of as many as possible on his estate. The 7th earl of Stamford planted the fine spreading cedar in the middle of this picture, along with Monkey Puzzle Trees and a number of other exotic trees throughout the Little Matlock area of the park. 63

Grey Family Tree: Part three – The End of the Earldom

Henry Grey = Mary Booth (1715 - 1768) (1703 - 1772) 4th Earl of Stamford

George-Harry Grey Booth Grey John Grey 5th Earl of Stamford and Warrington (1740 - 1802) (1743 - 1802) (1737 - 1819)

George-Harry Grey Sophia Grey = Booth Grey 6th Earl of Stamford and Warrington (d. 1849) of Aston Hayes, Cheshire Rev. Harry Grey (1765 - 1854) (1783 - 1850) (1783 - 1860)

George-Harry Grey Lord Grey of Groby 3) Martha= Rev. Harry Grey Rev. William Grey (1802 - 1835) Solomons (d. 1916) 8th Earl of (1819 - 1872) Stamford (1812 - 1890)

William Grey George-Harry Grey = 1) Elizabeth John Francis Mary 9th Earl of Stamford Billage (d. 1854) 7th Earl of Stamford (1886 - 1945) (1850 - 1910) and Warrington = 2) Catherine (1827 - 1883) Cocks (d. 1905) LAST EARL TO OWN BRADGATE Roger Grey Jane Grey 10th Earl of Stamford (1899 - 1991) (1886 - 1976) 64 where pheasants roamed at will were charged very little married three times, and was rescued from the life of a rent. Great house parties, centred on the new Bradgate down-and-out by a Cape Coloured woman called Martha House, led to the slaughter of vast numbers of game Solomons, who became his third wife. birds. In January 1882 the Prince of Wales (later Edward The eighth earl never returned to England, and died VII) attended a shoot at Bradgate. He arrived by train at in 1890, leaving two surviving children by Martha the old Midland Station in Campbell Street, Leicester, Solomons: a son born before their marriage, and a and was driven in an open carriage through streets daughter afterwards. Under South African law, the son decorated with bunting and flags. When he arrived at became legitimate because of his parents’ subsequent Bradgate House in the winter dusk the staff were lined marriage, but it was not so in England, and a committee up outside to greet him by lantern light. The following of the House of Lords decreed that the title should pass day between two and three thousand head of game were to the Rev Harry’s cousin William. shot on Bradgate Park, and the Prince was shown round The ninth earl of Stamford was a very different the ruins of the home of lady Jane Grey. character from his predecessor, and would have made a As the earl was also gambling, his huge fortune was much more suitable clergyman. Academic and worthy, dwindling. He began to mortgage property after he lived in London with his wife Penelope, who was a property. As well as building Bradgate House, he also vicar’s daughter, and their two children, Roger and Jane, spent huge sums on Enville Hall, where the gardens and until the death of Catherine Cocks. grounds vied with the greatest in the land, and a huge glass-house was erected which in size was second only Kitty Cocks, Dowager Countess to the Crystal Palace. Catherine, now Dowager countess of Stamford and The winter after the Prince of Wales’ visit, Warrington, had been left a life interest in all her George-Harry took a trip to his estate at Aviemore in husband’s properties. She ran a profitable stud at Scotland, where he had recently built a new wing to his Enville, and through her business acumen turned the hunting lodge. When he returned home ill, it was estate round and made it pay again. She divided her time attributed to exposure to cold and damp over a long between Enville and Bradgate. She never lived at period. He died in January 1883, aged 55. Dunham, where there had been trouble over the Bowdon churchwardens forbidding the ringing of the The South African Earl church bells on the occasion of her wedding, though she As the seventh earl had not produced an heir and had no and her husband had always shown an interest in their brothers, the Warrington title died out, and the eighth Cheshire and Lancashire estates. earl of Stamford was a distant cousin, the Rev. Harry In Leicestershire she was involved in various good Grey. This lord Stamford was a renegade clergyman. He works, particularly the Royal Infirmary and the Institute was an alcoholic and his scandalous behaviour led to his for the Blind. Stories recalled by people with family family shipping him out to the Cape as a ‘remittance memories of the Bradgate Estate paint a picture of a tall, man’ (given an allowance which he could pick up from elegant woman. Because of her stature, some of her a post office as long as he stayed out of the way and occasional tables were made higher than normal. Only stopped embarrassing them). He was not expected to particularly tall and good looking footmen were succeed to the title, but due to the deaths of those with employed, but attractive applicants for the position of prior claims this is what happened. The Rev Harry Grey maidservant were never engaged. In her latter years the 65

staff would sometimes refer to her affectionately, but A 19th century engraving by an unknown artist, of Little behind her back, as Old Kit. Matlock, looking towards Newtown Linford. In November 1904, winter arrived early and lady Stamford sent word to Enville Hall that the house must to obtain. The blaze got out of control, and wrought be kept well aired. The fires were banked up, a chimney havoc on much of the great, historic house. Lady caught light, and an inferno was soon raging through the Stamford was devastated. On January 29th, 1905, she rooms. Fire engines had difficulty traversing the died at Bradgate House. snowbound lanes, and the frozen lake made water hard 66

Cropston Reservoir Cropston Reservoir was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century to provide the rapidly expanding town of Leicester with a reliable supply of drinking water. The site at Bradgate was one of five considered by the Leicester Water Works Company who handled the scheme and who purchased 180 acres of the Park from the earl of Stamford for £24,000. Work commenced in the late 1860s and the Reservoir was operational by May 1871. The rising waters covered the site of the old rabbit warren together with the keeper’s cottage. reservoir from the Park were built by George Rudkin At full capacity the Reservoir contains 480 million for just 8s 10d per yard. The large labour force required gallons (about 2234 megalitres) of water which provide was partly boarded in the homes of local people and a surface area of 148 acres (about 59 hectares). The dam, partly housed in temporary accommodation on site. which has a core of puddled clay, is 760 yards long, The behaviour of the men both on and off duty was between 40 and 50 feet high and gives a depth of water strongly in the tradition of the ‘navvies’ who had earlier of 38 feet. Whereas water from the earlier undertaking built the local canals and railways. at Thornton fed water to Leicester by gravity, that from Cropston Reservoir is an important site for wildlife. Cropston always had to be pumped. The original steam Only twenty years after its completion, the Rev T. A. engines were taken out of commission in the 1950s and Preston had recorded 225 species of wild plants. These replaced by modern electrical ones. These in turn have included the first British record for the Fleabane, Inula now been updated to make use of microchip britannica. The open water provides resting and feeding technology. for wildfowl, particularly the large numbers of ducks Part way through the building of the reservoir, and which over-winter here. The frequent rise and fall of with costs rising, the entire operation was taken over by the water level exposes mud which attracts wading Leicester Corporation. The original budget was for a birds on migration. Not surprisingly perhaps, the total of £126,000 but the final expenditure was Reservoir has been declared a Site of Special Scientific £142,000. The cost of the dam alone accounted for Interest and is managed under a plan drawn up by the £41,356 whilst the 1300 yards of wall separating the Leicestershire Wildlife Trust. 67

At the same time as Cropston Reservoir was constructed, a number of small pools were constructed along the River Lyn, to reduce the amount of silt and sediment flowing in to the reservoir. The result is a chain of surprisingly impressive waterfalls, which add to the scenic charm of Little Matlock. 68

8. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

In accordance with the seventh earl’s will, on his wife’s Roger’s younger sister, lady Jane Grey, who hated death the three main Grey estates were split up. Dunham life in a stately home and longed for an ordinary house, Massey went with the title, and became the property of married the local curate, Rev Peveril Turnbull, and William, ninth earl of Stamford. When he died, in 1910, achieved fulfilment as a country vicar’s wife. In her later his son Roger became the tenth earl at the age of 14. years she took renewed interest in her ancestry and paid Roger never married, but lived at Dunham with his several visits to Bradgate Park, inspecting it happily mother, who died in 1959 aged 93. When Roger died in from the front seat of a keeper’s Landrover in her late 1976, the title died out and the property passed, as arranged in his lifetime, to the National Trust. It is now Even while the Grey family owned Bradgate, it became a open to the public during the summer months, except popular day-tripper’s destination, and a favourite subject for on Thursdays and Fridays. early postcards such as the one below. 69

Grey Family Tree: Part four – The Bradgate Inheritance George-Harry Grey Lord Grey of Groby (1802 - 1835)

George-Harry Grey = 1) Elizabeth Margaret = Henry Milbank 7th Earl of Stamford Billage (d. 1854) (d. 1852) (1824 - 1872) and Warrington = 2) Catherine (1827 - 1883) Cocks (d. 1905) THE LAST EARL TO OWN Arthur =Katherine Louisa = Francis BRADGATE Duncombe (d. 1926) (d. 1873) Arkwright They took the surname Grey in 1905 when (d. 1911) (d. 1915) Katherine inherited the BRADGATE ESTATE, on the death of Catherine (nee Cocks).

Alice Louisa Cecily = 1) Viscount Moungarret Muriel (1874 - 1899) (d. 1918) = 4th Baron = Ronald D’Arcy Fife 2) Charles Hervey Hoare Delamore She died on their Took the surname Grey honeymoon

Cecily inherited BRADGATE PARK in 1926, and sold it in 1928 to Charles Bennion, who presented it to the people of the City and County of Leicester. 70

The War Memorial, erected on the other end of the ridge occupied by Old John, commemorates the men of the Leicestershire Yeomanry who died in the Boer Wars and the two World Wars. The resulting distinctive skyline, visible from much of Leicestershire, makes the hill one of the county’s most familiar landmarks. eighties. She died in 1991, aged 92. Enville. Under the terms of the seventh earl’s will, it was Enville Hall was rebuilt with money from the Sarah Letitia’s descendants who inherited the Enville Insurance company, and remains a private house. estates. George-Harry had been particularly fond of Catherine’s The Leicestershire estates became the property of niece, Sarah Letitia, who had been born in a Dorset Katherine Henrietta Venezia Duncombe, daughter of workhouse, brought up in the stately home, and had George-Harry’s sister Margaret. She and her husband married the Rev Alfred Payne, who became Rector of were required to add the name of Grey to that of 71

Kitty Brown Remembers My family lived in the right-hand half of what is now Marion’s Cottage gift shop. There were five of us children, and I was born in 1906. In those days Bradgate Park belonged to the Grey family. Mr Haslegrave, the Agent, lived in the village, and Mr Middleton, the Keeper, lived in the Lodge in the middle of the park. I can just remember seeing the oak trees being pollarded for what must have been the last time. I never saw the ghost of lady Jane Grey on New Year’s Eve, though Mr Haslegrave was convinced he did. He went out one year specially, and said he saw her walking along by the ruins. As far as I know, she was wearing her head! You could not wander at will over the hillsides, or up to Tyburn. You could walk along the main drive to Hallgates, but the roadway was in a poor state. Nobody bothered with it, and of course nobody had to take a car over it. You were also allowed to take a footpath from the ruins up to Old John, and there were footpaths to Anstey and Cropston, but you had to keep to the path. Lots of people came out from Leicester to walk along the main drive, but you were hardly allowed to look at the rest. Of course, as children, we didn’t always go by the rules! We loved to paddle in the brook, climb up the rocks, and play hide-and-seek in the bracken. Nobody took too much notice of what children got up to, though they would come and tell us off. We couldn’t play on the Park Field (where the car park is now) because it was boggy and smelly with sewage from the sewage field on Groby Lane. Sometimes we would gather mayblobs there, but had to be very careful where we put our feet. In the Park we gathered chestnuts to eat. This was trespassing, but we always kept one person as a ‘look-out’ in case somebody came along and caught us. We were always in the brook, specially our family, from Marion’s Cottage. We would collect frogspawn and go fishing for tiddlers, and we made a wonderful den up a tree, where the branches forked out. I was sad when that tree fell down. Four or five of us could get up at a time – girls and boys. We were great friends with the Neale children from Beech Farm – Doris, Frank, Marjorie and Wilfred. They were always the ringleaders, and somehow always got away with it. Old Glover Ball, who must have been in his 50s or 60s, proposed to Doris soon after she left school. That really was the talk of the town... Kitty Brown (above) has lived in Newtown Linford all her life and grew up in Park Cottage (left), the right hand half of the pair of cottages now known as Marion’s Cottage, the Bradgate Park shop. 72

Bradgate’s Mystery Ditches In the north-east corner of the Park, near the wall of the Hallgates car park, lies a remarkable series of banks and ditches, the origin and purpose of which still remain very much of a mystery. Their symmetry, size and configuration suggest strongly that they are man-made rather than natural. They begin and end for no obvious topographical reason. If they are the remains of once more extensive earthworks of a very long lost age, it is difficult to even suggest a defensive or other feature to which they might relate. The depth of the ditches, typically eight feet, and the distances between a pair of ridges, about 24 feet, seem to rule out their use as a routeway. One idea is that they are the last remnants of a prehistoric tribal boundary similar to those known in other parts of England and possibly dating from the middle Bronze Age (around 1400 BC). It has even been suggested that they were constructed for training recruits in the techniques of trench warfare during World War One. 73

Duncombe. She put the estate up for sale in the 1920s, and Bradgate Park was bought by a local industrialist, Mr Charles Bennion, in 1928, after Katherine’s death, from her daughter Cecily. Mr Bennion, of the British United Shoe Machinery Company, presented it to the city and county of Leicester ‘to be preserved in its natural state for the quiet enjoyment of the people of Leicestershire’, available for all time as a place of recreation. It has been administered since then by the Bradgate Park Trust. The popular perception of Bradgate Park as a place where time has stood still, is due in large measure to the abandonment of the house and the fact that it escaped the attentions of the landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century. At their other two properties, the Greys were in the forefront of new fashions of landscape design. They created avenues and then destroyed them, excavated lakes, moved earth and constructed cascades and ornamental buildings. What the Greys did introduce to Bradgate were some exotic imported trees. Above: Charles Bennion, benefactor. These have caused some controversy, but for most Below left: The wishing stone, in Little Matlock. people the mature Cedars of Lebanon and Monkey Puzzles in Little Matlock are part of the wonderful variety of nature, to be mourned when a gale brings another of them down. Because of Bradgate Park, most Leicestershire people are as familiar with deer and bracken and hills and rocks as if they lived in the Highlands of Scotland. The scale of the land is intimate, but it is unrivalled as a place of blissful memories. A Leicestershire exile in the tropics dreams of Bradgate in the snow, while the winter-bound city dweller plans a trip to Bradgate in the spring. Countless marriages have been proposed there. The Greys owned it for five hundred years. Now it belongs to the people for all time.

75

Bradgate Park as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) The park is important not only on account of its commercial management elsewhere. The ancient trees spectacular scenery and strong historical connections present a continuity reaching back over five hundred but also because it has a rich and varied flora and fauna years and more. Some of the creatures they support together with marked geological interests. Bradgate is suggest unbroken links with the wildwood of one of the finest examples of ancient parkland in pre-history. Over six hundred species of beetles for Leicestershire. The large areas of open ground have example, and many unusual and uncommon spiders species typical of the moorlands of Southern England have been been found present. yet still support some of the rarer ones for which The park supports a good variety of breeding birds Charnwood was once well known. Some of the plants including woodcock, sparrowhawk, three species of demonstrate the area’s likenesses with two other woodpecker and whinchat. Even more important are outstanding places in the midlands: Sherwood Forest the populations of species declining in Leicestershire and Cannock Chase. Bradgate also contains some of the such as Barn owl and redstart. The totals recorded for last fragments of wet heath in the county, with such species as Dyer’s Greenweed, Common Milkwort, Crossleaved Heath and Mountain fern. In addition, the margins of Cropston Reservoir support nationally scarce species such as Orange foxtail Grass, Needle spike-rush, small water-pepper and Golden Dock. The marshy ground of the north and east of the Park, dominated by purple moor grass, has a number of locally rare plants – for example, moonwort, Creeping Willow and Lesser Skulcap. Small pools contain Bogmoss and are inhabited by the broad-bodied chaser dragonfly and two species of Hydroporus water beetle, both rare in Leicestershire. Yet another outstanding feature of the Park is the richness of the invertebrate fauna, which is a reflection of the diversity of different habitats in the park and is especially related to the ancient oaks. These produce in particular an abundance of rotting wood which is a habitat seldom found in woodlands under modern 76 the park are greatly increased if the resident and contain some of the oldest known fossils including the visiting water fowl and other birds of Cropston famous Charnia masoni. Reservior are taken into account. Bradgate Park was recognised at an early date as a The British mammal fauna is well represented too, very special place and was notified as a Site of Special particularly by the deer population, members of which Scientific Interest under the terms of the National are probably descended from those first introduced to Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949. This the park in the thirteenth century. (See page 56). status was later confirmed by section 28 of the Wildlife Several kinds of reptiles, too, are present, such as slow and Countryside Act of 1981. Although thus protected worm, adder and common lizard, all species struggling in principle by statute, Bradgate shares the same to survive in other parts of Leicestershire. uncertainties and pressures faced by many similarly The rocks of Bradgate (see page 8) have been designated areas. Its survival as a haven for such a recognised as of national importance for what they tell diverse range of plants and animals requires the us about events in pre-Cambrian times, approximately on-going commitment of the visitors, staff and six hundred million years ago. Certain of these rocks Bradgate Park Trustees. 77

9. A Self-Guided Walk Through Bradgate Park

This short walk through the ‘Low Park’ is about 1¾ miles (2.8km) from end to end. It points out some of the features of historic interest that can be seen without leaving the tarmac drive. Features 9, 19 and 20 may take a little searching for when the bracken is high in the summer. There is much to commend this walk for a fine winter’s day. 1 Coppiced Oak Tree: Four trees appear to grow from one stump. Coppicing, cutting a tree near the ground, produces shoots which develop into poles. Every 7 to 20 years they would be harvested. These specimens 5 Wishing Stone: This marks the site of a dam across haven’t been cut for over 80 years the Lyn, which created a head of water to feed the leat. 2 Little Matlock: A steep-sided wooded valley named 6 Leat: A channel designed to take water from the after the rugged scenery of Matlock in Derbyshire. River Lyn to the House. The construction of this feature was a fine piece of engineering of the early 16th C. 3 Monkey Puzzle Tree and Cedar of Lebanon: Introduced into the Park in the nineteenth century, when 7 Line of the Park Pale: Here the line of the perimeter it was fashionable to plant exotic species in a country pale (bank and ditch) of the first Bradgate Park is estate. Look around for other specimens in this area. crossed. It shows as a long shallow depression where the grass is green even in the driest summer. It is continued 4 Pools and Waterfalls: These were created at the on the far side of the stream and runs uphill through the same time as the reservoir. The waterfalls aerate the deer sanctuary. (see pages 14-16) water, and the pools, which contain fish such as trout, crayfish, and stickleback, allow silt to be deposited 8 Bennion Plaque: A plaque to Charles Bennion who before reaching the reservoir. bought the Park from the Greys, and gave it ‘for the quiet enjoyment of the people of Leicestershire’. 78

9 Moated site: The site of the lodge of the keepers of 14 Site of Watermill: powered by water which was the first Bradgate Park. The lodge became carried along the leat. redundant when Thomas Grey laid out his ‘new’ park in 15 Sluice Channel c. 1500. 10 16 Water Meadow: The water meadow is an area of flat Pheasantry: This large rectangular enclosure with land created in the nineteenth century to improve high stone walls was built to keep predators away from the Park’s grazing. Water for flooding was led from the newly hatched game birds. Lyn along the channels (which run alongside the tarmac 11 Grey Plaque: A small notice recounting the death drive) and into brick-lined conduits. The sluices, now of Roger Grey, tenth earl of Stamford, whose gone, regulated the flow, direction and depth of water in ancestors owned the Park for five centuries. The title is the conduits. now extinct. 12 Bridge over the Lyn: Important visitors approaching the House from Leicester used to cross the river here. King William did so on his visit to Bradgate in 1696. 13 Bradgate House Ruins : see pages 22-26. The Chapel is the only roofed building in the ruins, and contains the fine alabaster tomb of Henry Grey, who was created baron Groby, and who died in 1614.

Red deer roam widely around the park, but are most often seen in the areas near the ruins and water meadow.

17 Keeper’s Lodge: Built at the end of the nineteenth century to replace the one lost to the reservoir (see p. 52). 18 Deer Barn, Visitor Centre and Toilets.

19 Line of the Park Pale: This shows as a bank and ditch emerging from Coppice Plantation, crossing the tarmac drive and then disappearing under the water of the reservoir. (see map on page 10). 20 Ridge and Furrow. This characteristic feature of Peacocks now inhabit the ruins and have startled many medieval cultivation is part of the ploughland of the lost visitors (and perhaps fuelled a few rumours of ghosts) with village of Bradgate. (see page 14). It was incorporated their blood curdling calls. into his ‘new’ park by Thomas Grey in around 1500. 79

SWITHLAND WOODS

Hunts Hill Spinney Hall Gates

Sliding Stone Spinney

Mystery Ditches To p o s c o p e Coppice Old JohnTower Plantation

Old John Spinney Dale Spinney War Memorial CROPSTON RESERVOIR

Bowling Deer Barn Spinney Tyburn Hill Green Spinney to CROPSTON Elder Spinney

Bradgate House

Deer Sanctuary (Not open to the public Holly this side of the river.) Plantation Thorn Spinney NEWTOWN LINFORD ½mile

1km to GROBY to ANSTEY 80

A Hill Walk Hunt’s Hill (Old John Car Park) to Newtown Linford and 55) is a curious brick and rock wall. This is all that — 1¼ miles (2km). remains of the stables built to accommodate the seventh Between the Car Park and the Park proper is Hunt’s earl of Stamford’s race horses, which once exercised on Hill, a wooded area outside the boundary wall. It was a a course around Old John. prehistoric meeting place at the crossing of ancient tracks. Beside the stables, pass through one of the entrances Once inside the park there is a short but steep climb into Old John Spinney. There are several walled from the entrance gate to the summit of Old John, spinneys in the park, but this is the only one the public offering panoramic views over the surrounding is permitted to enter. They were walled (to keep out the countryside. The toposcope, which indicates the deer) and planted in the eighteenth century to provide direction and distance of other landmarks in the area, game coverts. Beaters would drive the birds out of a was purchased by the villagers of Newtown Linford wooded hilltop covert, forcing them to fly across the from the proceeds of their 1953 pageant. valley towards the safety of a neighbouring spinney — Just beyond Old John Tower (for which see pages 52 directly over the waiting guns of the shooting party. 81

After passing through the spinney, the next summit The course of this walk can be seen on the aerial is the site of the War Memorial, dedicated to the men of photograph on page 6, running from the bottom right the Leicestershire Yeomanry who lost their lives in the hand corner of the picture to the top centre. Boer Wars, and the Two World Wars. Continuing south, a broad grassy path leads down a A Circular Route steep slope past the crags of the slate agglomerates (see The Hill Walk ends where the Self-Guided Walk on pages 8-9). A path leads to a lower hilltop spinney — page 77 starts. The two routes can be joined together and without a wall — known as Tyburn. This is named after followed to Hallgates. Then, continuing in an Tyburn Hill in London, the site of public executions anti-clockwise direction, follow the path alongside the until 1783. The Bradgate Tyburn was apparently used boundary wall, past the ‘Mystery Ditches’ (see page 72), not as a place to hang criminals but somewhere to up the hill and back to the Old John car park. This castrate young hunting dogs, at a distance from the provides a walk of some 4½ miles (7 km). kennels, so that their yelps would not be heard by the Visitors are, of course, at liberty to wander anywhere other hounds. they wish in the park, except for the designated deer There is a choice of paths down to the dividing wall reserve beyond the river, and the walled spinneys. The between the High and Low Parks. A gap at the end of ruins are open at specified times in the summer months. this wall leads to the Newtown Linford entrance. 82

Further Reading AIRS, Malcolm. The Tudor and Jacobean Country House, RAMSEY, D. A. Break Fast at Bradgate. Volcano A Building History. Alan Sutton Publishing (1995) Publishing (1996); CANTOR, Leonard. The Medieval Parks of England: A RAMSEY, D. A. Was there a Village Called Bradgate? Gazeteer. Loughborough University (1983) David Ramsey (1998) CANTOR, Leonard and SQUIRES, Anthony. The SQUIRES, A. E. & HUMPHREY, W. The Medieval Historic Parks and Gardens of Leicestershire and Rutland. Parks of Charnwood Forest. Sycamore Press (1986) Kairos Press (1997) SQUIRES, Anthony. Leicestershire and Rutland CHAPMAN, Hester. Lady Jane Grey. Jonathon Cape Woodlands Past and Present. Kairos Press (1994) (1962) SQUIRES, Anthony. Donington Park and the Hastings CROCKER, J (Ed. ) Charnwood Forest, A Changing Connection. Kairos Press (1996) Landscape. Sycamore Press/Loughborough Naturalists’ STEVENSON, Joan. The Greys of Bradgate. Bradgate Club (1981) Park Trust (1974) DAVEY, R. P. B. Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen STEVENSON, Joan. A Family Guide to Bradgate Park and Her Times. Methuen (1909) and Swithland Woods. Sycamore Press (1979) FORSYTH, Marie. The History of Bradgate. Bradgate STEVENSON, Joan. A Family Guide to Charnwood Park Trust (1974) Forest. Sycamore Press (1982), now available from Kairos FORD, Trevor D. The Rocks of Bradgate. Bradgate Park Press. Trust (1974) STEVENSON, Joan. Country House Parks of Leicestershire. LUKE, Mary. The Nine Days Queen. William Morrow & (Sycamore Leaves series) Sycamore Press (1985) Co. New York (1986) STEVENSON, Joan (ed.). Memories of Newtown Linford MATHEW, David. Lady Jane Grey, The Setting of the and Bradgate House. Kairos Press (1994) Reign. Eyre Methuen (1972) STEVENSON, Joan. Newtown Linford, The Old Buildings McWHIRR, Alan. Brickmaking in Leicestershire before and their Occupants. Kairos Press (1998) about 1710. Trans. Leics Arch & Hist Soc. Vol 71. (1997) WEBSTER, Michael. Birds of Charnwood. Kairos Press pp.37-59 (1997) OTTER, Jack. The Birds of Bradgate. Bradgate Park Trust (1976) The birdlife of Bradgate Park and Cropston Reservoir can also be traced from the Annual Reports of the PLOWDEN, Alison. Lady Jane Grey and the House of Loughborough Naturalists’ Club and Bulletins of the Suffolk. Sidgwick & Jackson (1985) Leicestershire and Rutland Ornithological Society. RAMSEY, D. A. A Time Line to Old John. Volcano Publishing (1996) 83

Acknowledgements The authors wish to record their appreciation to the With this book specifically in mind we wish to many people who have shared with them their express our thanks to Brian Anderson, Kitty Brown, knowledge of Bradgate Park and the Grey family. Some, R and K Burrows, John Crocker, Joy Geary, Colin like Edward Turner, Sir Andrew Martin, Edward Green, Alan Hamilton, Robert F Hartley, Michael Stewart Gray and lady Jane Turnbull, are sadly no Jeeves, Piers Keating, Ralph Leek, Leicestershire longer with us. We are grateful to the staff of the Museums Service, Peter Liddle, David Lyne, Mervyn National Trust at Dunham Massey; Clive Alford; M. J. Stevenson, Michael Webster, Gill Weightman and all Scott-Bolton and Mrs Sandy Haynes at Enville; Michael those other people who have contributed in one way or Harrison and the Bradgate Park staff and Trust; another. In particular we owe a great deal to the zeal and Leicestershire Record Office; Peter Lee, David Ramsey, technological expertise of our publisher, Robin Margaret Pratt, and David Smith who also drew our Stevenson of Kairos Press. attention to the earlier work of D A (Peter) Blakesley. Index Cecil, William 44 Enville Hall 23, 50, 51, 55, 58, Greys – marquesses of Dorset A Cedar of Lebanon 62, 73, 77 60, 64, 65, 70 Thomas, 1st marquess 7, 14, 17, Adelaide, Queen 55 Charles I 21, 25, 44, 46 exotic trees 62,77 18, 19, 21, 25, 27, 28, 37, 45 Alymer, John 38 Charles II 46 Thomas, 2nd marquess 12, 17, Anstey 28, 53, 55, 71 Charnwood Forest 7, 28, 49, 59 F 19, 21, 25, 35, 37 Ascham, Roger 38 Civil War 44, 50 fallow deer 56-57 Henry, 3rd marquess 19, 21, 25, 31, Ashby Castle 18, 39, 46 Clifford, Margaret 36 Ferrers family 7, 13, 14, 17, 27 35-41, 43, 45 Astley 41 Cocks, Catherine 51, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64 Field Head 14, 59, 60 Greys – earls of Stamford Aylmer, John 36 Compton Wynyates 21 Fielding, Percy 60 Henry, 1st earl 21, 44, 45, 46, 50 Coppice Plantation 78, 79 Firth, Charles 54 Thomas, 2nd earl 23, 25, 26, 32, B Coulson, William 54 fishponds 30, 31, 32 45, 46, 48, 50, 51 Beacon Hill Tuff Formation 9 Cromwell, Oliver 46 fossils 8, 76 Henry, 3rd earl 23, 25, 45, 50 Bennion, Charles 25, 69, 73,77 Cropston 50, 71 Framlingham Castle 40 Henry, 4th earl 25, 45, 50, 55, 63 Bentinck, Henrietta Cavendish 52 Cropston Reservoir 14, 18, 66,75, George-Harry, 5th earl 23, 55, 59, 63 Bess of Hardwick 43 76, 79 G George-Harry, 6th earl 23, 55, 59, 63 Billage, Bessie 58, 60, 63, 69 Cunnery, the 49 gardens 29, 31, 32,33,34 George-Harry, 7th earl 25, 55, 58, Booth, Mary 23, 45, 50, 51, 52, 63 Garendon 28 60, 62, 63, 64, 68, 69 Bosworth Field 15, 17 D glaciation 9 Harry, 8th earl 63, 64 Boulder Clay 9 Dale Spinney 26, 79 Glorious Bloodless Revolution 47 William, 9th earl 63, 64 Bradgate House 17-18, 19-26, 30, 33, deer at Bradgate 56-57 granite 8,19 Roger, 10th earl 51, 63, 68, 78 39, 47, 48, 50, 53, 58, 60, 64, 65, 68,78 deer barn 78 Grentmesnil, Hugh de 7 Groby 7, 10, 11, 60, 79 Bradgate Park Trust 73, 76 deer sanctuary 15, 28, 79 Grey Groby Old Hall 7, 17, 18, 27 Bradgate Tuff Formation 8 Ditches, Mystery 72, 79, 81 Cecily 25, 69, 73 Groby Pool 7 Bradgate village 12, 14, 28, 78 Douglas, Margaret 36 Frances 35-41, 45 Groby Manor 7, 11, 13 Brandon, Charles 35, 37 Dudley, Guildford 39, 40, 41, 43 Henry, baron Grey of Groby 25, 44, Brandon, Eleanor 36 Dudley, John 39 45, 78 H Brandon, Frances: see Frances Dumples, The 18 Katherine 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45 Hallgates 8, 14, 28, 71, 72, 79, 81 Grey Duncombe, Katherine 69, 70 lady Jane 19, 21, 25, 35-41, 45, Hampton Court 17 brick-making 18, 20 Dunham Massey 50, 51, 55, 64, 68 64, 71 Hardwick Hall 23 Broadgate 14 Mary 36, 37, 44, 45 Haslegrave, Edward 71 Brown, Kitty 71 E Richard 15 Hastings family 18, 46 Bullinger, Henry 38 Edward IV 13, 35, 37 Sir John 13, 37 Henry VII 15, 17, 25 Edward VI 35, 36, 37, 39, 40 Sir John of Pirgo 44, 45 Henry VIII 17, 19, 35, 36, 37, 40 C Edward VII 64 Grey of Ruthin, Edward 13, 37 horse racing 55, 62 canal 33, 34 Elder Spinney 15,79 Hunt’s Hill 28, 79, 80 Causeway Lane, Cropston 14 Elizabeth I 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 44 84

Richard III 13, 15, 37 ridge and furrow 28, 78 River Lyn 15, 27, 29, 61, 67, 78 rocks 8-9 Romans 18 Rudkin family 54, 66 ruins: see Bradgate House S Seymour, Jane 35 Seymour, Thomas 36 shooting 59, 80 Site of Special Scientific Interest 66, 75-76 Sketchley, Thomas 54, 55 Slump Breccia 8, 9 Solomons, Martha 63, 64 spinneys 10, 15, 54, 59,80 St Albans, battle of 13 St Nicholas’ Church 18 Stamford and Warrington, earls of 52 Steward’s Hay 53, 59, 60 Suffolk, duke of: see Henry Grey, 3rd marquess of Dorset Swithland slate 8, 9 Swithland Woods 8, 10, 79 T Throckmorton, Nicholas 40 Thurcaston 28, 50 tiltyard, the 30 Old John Spinney 79, 80 Torrington, viscount 53 J M Old John stables 80 Tower of London 41, 43, 46, 47 Jacobite Rebellion 46 Marion’s Cottage 71 trees, exotic 62 Jacquetta of Luxemburg 13, 37 Marston, John 50 P Turnbull, lady Jane 63, 68, 70 James I 44 Martin, William 55, 60 Park Cottage 71 Tyburn 71, 79, 81 James II 46 Mary I 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 43 park pale 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 27, Jewry Wall 18 Mary, Queen of Scots 36 28, 54, 77 U Maynard, Mary 47 parker’s house 11, 12, 78 Ulverscroft 28, 53 K medieval deer parks 11 Parr, Katherine 36, 37 keeper’s lodge 78 Mercian Mudstone 9 parterres 30, 32 W Keyes, Thomas 44 Middleton, Mr 71 partridges 59 walls of Bradgate 54 Kiddiar, Nicholas 24, 33 moated site 11, 12, 78 peacocks 78 War Memorial 70, 79, 80,81 King William’s Bridge 48 Monkey Puzzle Tree 73, 77 pheasant shooting 54, 59, 62 Warrington, earl of 50, 51, 52, 64 Kirby Muxloe Castle 18 Monmouth, duke of 46 pheasantry 78 Wars of the Roses 46 Knyff, Leonard 24, 26, 30, 31 Mow Cop 55 pollarding 42, 71 water meadow 61,78 Princes in the Tower 15, 37 waterfalls 67, 77 L N watermill 29, 30,78 Lady Jane’s Tower’ 39 National Trust 51, 68 Q Webb, Henry 49 Lambert, Daniel 50 Newtown Linford 12, 14, 28, 35, 50, Queen Adelaide’s Oak 55 William III 21, 23, 25, 47, 48, 78 leat 27, 29, 30,77 52, 60, 71, 80, 81 Quorn hunt 60, 62 William IV 55 Leicester Abbey 18 Winchester, earl of 11 Leland, John 17, 27 O R Wishing Stone 73,77 Little Matlock 62, 65, 67, 73, 77, 84 oak trees 15, 41, 42, 71, 77 rabbits 49, 59 Wolsey, Cardinal 17 Louis XII 35 Old John 52, 55, 62, 70, 71, 74, red deer 56-57, 78 Woodville, Elizabeth 13, 17, 35, 37 Lovet, William 54 79, 80, 81 Renaissance 21, 36 Wyatt, Thomas 41 Restoration 46